Thailand’s boutique rums leave global industry wanting more thanks to pure sugar cane juice
Rum’s root ingredient, sugar cane, is native to Southeast Asia. A new wave of producers are making the most of its abundance in Thailand, as they break away from mass-produced methods of making the spirit
Chalong Bay Rum distillery offers a lesson in Phuket flavours. Trays of cinnamon, limes and holy basil are about to be infused into the island’s award-winning rum. Bulbous glass bottles, each numbered by hand, await distribution to France, Australia and Hong Kong.
Distillery owners Marine Lucchini and Thibault Spithakis, now both 31 years old, started the business aged 25. “We were working in finance in Paris and thought, ‘Why wait until we are 40? If we start the distillery now, we [will] have a head start’.”
The idea of opening a boutique rum distillery on a tropical Asian island is strangely sensible. Rum’s root ingredient, sugar cane, is native to Southeast Asia, and Thailand is now the fourth-largest producer in the world. By the 8th century, Arabian traders had carted the crop from Phuket to the Mediterranean. It was carried to the Caribbean by Christopher Columbus himself.
“The first rums were made in the Caribbean on French islands like Martinique and Guadeloupe but sugar cane is native to Southeast Asia,” says the Frenchmen. “All we had to do was bring the two cultures together.”
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Rum fans from around the world have taken the Chalong Bay factory tour. Its most striking feature is the vast copper still. It was made in Armagnac in southern France in 1973 and was formerly used to make brandy. “We bought it when the brandy distillery was closing down,” explains Lucchini. “And its original maker, an 86-year-old Frenchman, flew to Phuket to help us operate it.”
