Rum do – Hollywood behind sales leap
By Don Kavanagh
Perhaps the oddest news story of the last 12 months was the one about how the success of rum was being driven by one man – Johnny Depp.
Newspapers around the world jumped on the bandwagon and loudly proclaimed that rum sales were soaring purely because of the Pirates of the Caribbean movie franchise.
Media hype, of course, but there is a grain of truth somewhere in there. Not least in sales of rum in the UK, where giant supermarket chain Tesco reported growth in rum sales of more than 30 per cent overall and a massive 65 per cent in golden rum.
“Demand for rum is at its highest since the 1960s when everyone was drinking Cuba Libras,” Tesco’s rum buyer Katherine Abram was quoted as saying in the Daily Mirror.
“There’s no doubt Pirates of the Caribbean has helped. The swashbuckling theatricality of the films has inspired people to hold pirate parties with rum punch the order of the night.”
Rum’s image has also been boosted by reports of Princes William and Harry slugging back a cocktail called a Treasure Chest - rum, brandy, peach liqueur and Champagne – at about $NZ300 a throw in trendy London nightspots like Mahiki.
And it wasn’t just the mother country getting all excited – the US market also responded to Mr Depp’s blandishments and lashed out enough money on the golden spirit to see it climb steadily up the sales charts to second place, just behind vodka.
And what happens overseas is eventually mirrored here. Rum consumption is growing, but changing. The traditional choice of white or dark rum has been blurred by the flood of top-notch golden rums from the likes of Appleton, Havana Club, Bacardi and Myer’s, with cocktails once again the order of the day.
London-based bar consultant Paul Strong says that the rise of cocktail culture and the versatility of rum are behind the remarkable surge in sales around the world.
“Apart from vodka, which is essentially tasteless, rum is the ideal ingredient,” he says.
“It mixes well in sweet or dry drinks, it can provide a strong, upfront element in a cocktail or it can be understated and almost hiding in the background. It really is a wonderful ingredient to work with.”
Here in New Zealand there has been a long tradition of rum drinking, and the dominance of the Coruba brand still holds sway, but the picture is changing with lighter rums making headway against their darker counterparts.
The popularity of the pina colada, planter’s punch and mojito are showing the likely direction of the rum sector and the gradual shift towards lighter rums. Whether that means tough times are ahead for dark rum remains to be seen. What is certain, however, is that the global thirst for rum continues unabated and there is no question of it slowing down, regardless of how many pirate movies Hollywood churns out.