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" When we think of rum -- if we think of rum -- we generally think of little umbrellas and Coke and a whole lot of woo-hoo! (exclamation point included). Rum has become a fundamentally unserious beverage. And that&amp;#039;s too bad, because rum is simply cane sugar distilled -- just like Scotch is distilled barley sugar and cognac is distilled grape sugar. There&amp;#039;s no reason it can&amp;#039;t make just as smooth and complex a spirit as either of those. But a few things need to be taken care of first. For one thing, most rum actually starts not as sugar itself but as molasses, which takes some careful distilling or you&amp;#039;ll end up with a pretty funky-tasting spirit. That funk isn&amp;#039;t necessarily a bad thing -- it sure wakes up a mai tai -- but a little goes a long way when it&amp;#039;s naked in a glass. Then there&amp;#039;s the barrel problem. Spirits interact with oak more violently under a Caribbean sun than they do in, say, Scotland, which means that there&amp;#039;s a good chance they&amp;#039;ll get bitter before they get mellowed by age. Finally, why bother to make an exacting cut in your distillation run, keeping only the best stuff, if you know it&amp;#039;s all going to end up drowned in Coke? The upshot is that few rums aspire to greatness, and fewer still reach it. Those that do, however, are pure liquid sunshine, like a tanning bed for your winter-chilled innards. Here, three of our favorite sipping rums.    Cl\u00E9ment Cuv\u00E9e Hom\u00E8re ($90)   Distilled in Martinique from raw sugarcane juice (thus avoiding the molasses issue entirely), this lovely old rum uses French oak barrels to add spice and mellowness to the bright grassiness of the cane.   Angostura 1824 ($55)   This 12-year-old rum is made in Trinidad by the people responsible for Angostura bitters. It&amp;#039;s also one of our favorite distillates on earth, a wildly spicy (yet smoooooth) rum, with whiffs of vanilla, grilled pineapple, and brown sugar.    English Harbour 10-Year-Old Reserve ($199)   The least complex of the three, this product of Antigua is all vanilla cream when you nose it, but when you taste it, there are enough minerals and spice to keep it well on this side of insipid. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/drinks/a5290/best-rum-1208/>