Antiquated rum style?

Having started reading on rum and its history, i noticed that old time's rum had been more "oily" and it had been produced differently than modern time. Obviously, i am extremely curious, if i could somehow, to taste how rum used to be, before modernizations! Does any distillery somewhere, produce rum exactly how it was, in the beginning of its history?

I read that the ancestor of rum was arrack (a spirit distilled from rice and sugar cane), which was drunk long before the "discovery" of America. It's referred to in many polish books from the past. Not sure if this is what you meant but has anyone tried it?

Not exactly... Neither arrack, nor aguardiente something... After they found about molasses and yeast and produced the first rum, due to that era's distillation process, it was said that rum was more "oily". Especially old Barbadian ones, that gentry of the era threw parties with (i remember reading about one, that they filled an entire pool with rum instead of water and the serving boy rowed a boat, on its surface).

Sorry, accidental double post

https://barrel-aged-mind.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_5.html?m=1 PM and Savalle stills are still in use by Demerara. They are from the 1700s. Demerara sometimes produce the old marks. You can also try the Last Consignment, it's the original Navy rum. Some Enmore rums are woody and oily. Rum Nation Enmore 1997. El Dorado 21 is also oily and heavy, it's a mixed style of Enmore, MDXC and Versailles.

Wow, thanks a lot! To be honest, the very moment bars open again, i am going to order a serving of El Dorado 21 to taste it, instead of getting an entire bottle. The rest, i need to (re)search upon! Nice material, much obliged!

@Pirate Not trying to discourage you but El Dorado 21 isnt anymore oily than that Rhum JM X.O. we tried. At least not a noticeable amount. I compared both bottles side by side. Also, the Rhum JM X.O. taste better in my opinion.

The "oily" mouthfeel may come from pot still distillate, which contains more cogeners (=other types of alcohol than ethanol) into the finished products, and some of the longer chain alcohol can contribute to mouthfeel (but also hangover and other unpleasant effects). The other way to "improve" the mouthfeel (to make it oily, "smooth" and "luscious") is to add glycerol - an old distiller's trick that is considered out of bounds for honest brands. Glycerol is used buy food industry quite liberally, after all, fats are all tri-glycerides (there fatty acids bound to a molecule of glycerol).

If you want something made as it was done centuries ago you should try to find a bottle of “Rivers Antoine Royal Grenadian Rum” which is more or less done the same way as when they started up 1785. The cane is crushed in a water driven mill. They use copper pot stills. It’s wild fermented and they don’t have any temperature control. Finally they take the distillate directly to a cooler, dilute it and fill the bottles, so one can say that it’s bottled straight from the stills. That makes of course that the taste as well as the ABV differs from batch to batch. The product you get is a funky, esters and congeners rich rum. It’s “dirty”, rustic, fruity, briny, spicy, oily and powerful.

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