Janus and White Rum
Luis Ayala, Editor of "Got Rum?" magazine, Rum Consultant and Founder of The Rum University
Luis Ayala, Editor and Rum Consultant
Janus, the ancient Roman god of beginnings, gates and transitions, presided over the beginning and ending of conflicts, consequently presided over war and peace. Janus was often depicted as having two faces, since he was looking at the past and at the future concurrently. The month of January, against common belief, is not named after Janus, but rather after Juno (daughter of Saturn), but I’ve always believed it has more common traits with the former than with the latter.
This issue of “Got Rum?” marks the start of a new calendar year, it is also devoted to white rum or, more precisely, to colorless rum. In this sense, both are synonymous with beginning and birth. White rums are, after all, representative of the sugarcane distillate as it first emerges out of the still: unpretentious, unadulterated, ready to be consumed as-is or to be put into a barrel only to be born again from it many years later.
If there is a white rum renaissance, as our beloved Rum Historian Marco Pierini states in his article this month, then we are witnessing a movement to honor what has always been true about rum: that it is born naked and beautiful in its simplicity.
The fact that rum has to be aged or not, to meet a norm or a recognition, obeys to human laws, not nature’s ones. Juno, ironically, was the ancient Roman goddess devoted to protecting and counseling the state, thus completing our Janus-Juno-White Rum metaphor of change through past, future and through state regulations.
Regardless of one’s views towards white rum, one thing cannot be denied: aged rum would not be possible without its existence. Perhaps if consumers and producers start appreciating it more in its pristine nature, its aged counterparts could also rise in quality?
Certainly Janus will know, as the future inevitably becomes the past.
Cheers,
Luis Ayala, Editor and Publisher