THE RUM RENAISSANCE
RUM RUNS THROUGH modern Australia’s veins. In the colony’s early days, it was so prized that it became an unofficial currency (with predictably chaotic results), and Governor William Bligh’s unpopular attempts to curb the rum trade led to the Rum Rebellion of 1808.
Yet the boutique distilling renaissance of the 2000s and 2010s focused on whisky and gin. Rum – with all its associations of youthful overindulgence – got left behind. Those old prejudices are now on the way out. Even the patron saint of the B&S ball, Bundaberg Rum, is winning medals with its premium range at the World Rum Awards.
Among the first of Australia’s new-wave rum distillers was Raymond “Spike” Dessert III, who started
