Cooking With Fire

Bourbon may be the United States' official native spirit, but you could make a good argument that rum deserves that title instead. Rum was distilled in the U.S. hundreds of years before bourbon ever was, and it has a rich history from the mainland through to the Caribbean. But rum starts with sugarcane, and the story of sugarcane does not start anywhere near the Caribbean islands. Instead, sugarcane was brought west, possibly from China or India to the Middle East, where it was first refined into sugar in the 11th and 12th centuries. Sugar was then introduced to Europe through the Mediterranean and quickly spread across the continent. It was when Portugal, wanting to control their sugar supply, began growing sugar in several places along the African Coast — including the Canary Islands in the 15th century — that the plant made its first move toward this hemisphere. In 1492, among the many things Columbus brought on his voyage was the sugarcane plant. Soon after, the Spanish and