Rum is for everyone

Learning about rum from Marc Farrell of Ten To One Rum

Hello people! Today I want to talk about a spirit that’s close to my heart, a drink that I find fascinating and historic and of course delicious. I started to drink rum in my earliest visits to Puerto Rico—I actually lived there, very briefly, after I moved to America more than 30 years ago, before I settled in to Washington, DC. Since then, I’ve spent lots of time in the Caribbean—of course, working in the early days of World Central Kitchen in Haiti, and in Puerto Rico after Hurricane María—both islands produce amazing rums. I’m sure I’ve told you this before, but spirits like rum, they’re truly an agricultural product…so whenever you sip on it, or have it in a cocktail, you are supporting farmers — you are drinking local! Especially in the aftermath of a disaster, it’s important to buy local, to keep money in the economy.

What do you think about rum? Think about it for a second—do you love it? Does it remind you of a beach vacation, or an amazing cocktail…or maybe you think about a bad experience many years ago (I hope not!)? I want you to reconsider as you hear from my friend Marc Farrell, the founder of the brand Ten To One, who is making some of the most amazing rums available.

Marc is originally from the island of Trinidad, where he grew up in a family that celebrated the culture and history of rum. Trinidad is a rum-producing country, and so are many of the other islands of the Caribbean—you’ll find great rum in Jamaica, Barbados, Haiti (where I fell in love with it), and beyond. Actually, the name Ten To One, according to Marc, is inspired by a speech given by Dr. Eric Williams, the first prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago. He was trying to fight for a federation of ten Caribbean countries, and said that “One from ten leaves zero”—the idea being that we are stronger together than we are apart (this is all about longer tables, people!).

So here’s a great discussion that my team had with Marc…I hope you enjoy. And please come back on Wednesday for some of Marc’s suggestions of how to enjoy his rums…and a recipe for a Daiquiri!

What is the idea behind of Ten To One?

Marc: I think our mission, the way I’ve come to understand it over the last couple of years, is to inspire creative and cultural progress by sharing the spirit of the Caribbean with the world. And that spirit of the Caribbean to me is important because it’s meant to be a play on words. It is both quite literally rum but it’s also the connection, all of those things that you kind of get from that, right? And if I think about what the spirit of the Caribbean represents is the blend piece—the origin story of the name is how different people and places all have a seat at the table. You could come to a Ten To One event and you'd think, This room doesn't exist anywhere else, how did these people all end up in the same place and they're all connecting and they're all vibing and they're learning something new—and you’re just watching these molecules bounce around a room like it’s magic. That's the spirit of the Caribbean. That's what we try to capture. That's what we do with this idea of bringing these blends in very magical and intentional ways.

How do you think people understand rum today—and what do you wish people could understand?

The objective of Ten To One is to take something that is born out of the soil where I'm from, celebrate it, and put on a global stage…that's the mission. If I can get folks to understand and appreciate not just the liquid, but the broader cultural concept that surrounds that, then I really feel like we'll have an opportunity to be successful.

Twenty years ago when I would go on spring break there were two frozen slushy machines…one of them had a frozen margarita in it and the other one had a frozen strawberry daiquiri in it. One of those, the margarita slushy, has jumped the shark, right? Now you can’t go to any sexy downtown bar in any major metro city in the US without having a bunch of sipping tequilas on the back bar, or having an elevated spicy margarita on the menu. Whereas rum, in some ways, has been left in that strawberry daiquiri machine.

You think about words like craft or artisanal or what have you, terroir, provenance. You attach those words to wine tastings and whiskey tastings, right?  But I dream of a world where you actually attach those to rum, bring a more elevated liquid that’s incredibly versatile and additive free. Getting people away from this perception of rum being sweet and sugary and helping them to understand that there’s a provenance, and there’s terroir, there are different distillation methods, and that a rum like Ten To One has a real point of view—that there’s a beauty in the blend.

So how do you make your rums? What goes into the blends?

We always try to do our blending thoughtfully and artfully and intentionally. There are things I appreciate in the rums from all around the region, which are all super different. I always use the differences between Jamaica and Trinidad to make the point. Jamaica and Trinidad are located in almost opposite ends of the Caribbean, Jamaica in the northwest, Trinidad in the south—it’s geologically part of South America, so our soil composition is very different. We have oil and gas, we're an industrial economy. You'll hear people taste Trini rums and they say that they have a little bit of a kind of a petrol-y note to them quite literally. And then in Jamaica there’s an entirely different composition. They use the pot still method there. They're very much into hogo terroir funkiness. 

And so starting by painting these corners of the rum category and understanding what the points of difference are, understanding those different attributes and figuring out how you can combine them to create something where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

I would argue that if you taste our dark rum, it is better than a Jamaican rum you would have had on its own or a Trini one on its own…it’s like members of a band all playing a different role. And so yeah, I mean the process of creating those blends is to build that band—you have the Trinadadian and Jamaican rums have a little bit of that sort of drying finish, instead of something super sweet and cloying and sugary. The Jamaican rums on the front end, high in esters, more of those volatiles, banana peel notes, some of those richer cooked fruits. Barbados rums give a little bit more sort of the backbone: you get the toffee caramel, some of those almost bourbon notes that live as the backbone of the rum. And so, if you think of it as kind of members of a band where they all get to play a tune together, that gives you a little bit of a sense of how we think about creating these rums. We recently released our Five Origin Select which is a five country blend. Trinidad, Barbados, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, and Guyana. We've added Guyana to the story now with some exceptional rum from one of the oldest working double wooden pot stills in the world. It makes it a really excellent sipper.

How does the culture of the Caribbean inspire you?

I believe that everybody, whether you are from the Caribbean, or your parents are from the Caribbean, or you've been to the Caribbean, or you have some Caribbean friends in DC or New York or LA or whatever the case is…if you touch a bit of that culture, you understand there's a certain level of magic that's attached to it. I think a big part of Ten To One is encouraging people to look into the interior of these islands, to see that there's more than just blue waters and sandy beaches. I think about the spontaneity, the love of life, this super welcoming “come as you are” nature that's attached to Caribbean culture. So I hope that people can embrace that and build community around it.

The Caribbean isn’t just blue skies and spring break—it’s more about the moments of unexpected joy, the serendipity and the moments of celebration.

What does rum mean to people in the Caribbean?

It plays a huge role in moments of celebration, from big ones like Carnival to the super small, like just you and your family hanging out on the balcony. They could be super highbrow and fancy, they could be super lowbrow and basic. But woven into this fabric I think is where you find rum, it’s everywhere.

I was painting a picture for a friend of mine the other day. I said, Let me try to get you to understand what that energy is about, right? You might land in Kingston tomorrow, right? And you land in Kingston and there's a path that's laid out for you, street signs that tell you to go here to Montego Bay, whatever. Street signs say to go here, you sit down and you get your little Jamaican beef patty, they direct you to the beach where all the tourists hang out. And that's a lovely plan, that's one trip. 

But we're actually about the other trip where your willingness to say yes in some of those moments, to do something else from that path, which is quintessentially Caribbean. It's the power of an unexpected encounter. It's the magic that happens when you stop by a friend's house to drop off something you borrowed a week ago, but he has another old friend of his sitting on the veranda and calls you in to have a drink and the next thing you know it's 2 a.m. and you guys have been there…you don't even know how much time has passed, but five hours have gone by.  You could be a tourist, you go to a sound session in Jamaica or you go to a spot in Trinidad and you meet some people who you've never met before and by the way may never meet again. All of a sudden, you’re sharing a drink with some of their friends and you're playing some dominoes with the guys and then you're hearing all these stories and it creates this incredible sort of magic and I promise you rum is at the heart of all of those little moments of connection, right?

So to me, when you think about what it represents, it's a little bit of that connective tissue and that fabric in all of those crazy moments of connection and all those unexpected encounters.

At the same time, you’re advocating not only for Ten To Rum, but for rum as a whole—how do you keep up the energy?

It’s almost kind of the Russian nesting dolls: the littlest one is Ten To One, the bigger one is rum and even bigger than that is Caribbean culture overall…and yes, we’re fighting battles on those different fronts. It is a lot and it is exhausting, but I think one piece of advice I give all the time is, and it's not meant to be cliche, if you're going to do something like this, it has to be grounded in authenticity and has to be grounded in a sense of what you actually believe. So I don't have to put on a different hat to have these conversations because I’m just talking about the things that I actually want to be a champion for and want to carry water for. And in a way, Ten To One is a manifestation of those beliefs, all at the same time.

Rum has a very complicated history—the colonialism of the Caribbean, the history of slavery on sugar plantations, the unfair distribution of wealth between the people who owned the rum production and the people who worked the fields. How do you reckon with this history?

This is a conversation I have a lot with my friends, there’s an amazing artist in Trinidad named Che Lovelace, and a really close friend, Anya Ayoung-Chee, we talk about this a lot. Think about the origin story of Trinidad's carnival, right? If you go back in time, the old colonial planter class would get together, kind of like Mardi Gras, for two days of excess and celebration and pomp and all of those things. And then you had the slaves who basically created their own mimic version of that. It becomes their celebration too—which, by the way, many times in history was suppressed or beaten down or what have you. But it keeps on rising up and it keeps on rising up.

I think if you look at the story of the Caribbean, we are always talking about this idea of celebration. The terms I use when I talk to Anya and Che is celebration as a form of resistance or celebration and innovation in the face of adversity.

Look at the steel pan, the national instrument of Trinidad, that was made from old abandoned oil drums, right? Somebody with the foresight then fashions an old oil drum into this incredible musical instrument, one of the greatest of the 20th century. So this story of how do you take what's been deep and dark and turn it into something that gives us light.

I would actually go so far as to say that is the essence of Caribbean-ness—that is what we have done in our history. Celebration as a form of resistance. Celebration in the face of adversity. Find a way to smile and actually bring smiles to other people's faces as well. I don't think anybody's ever come back from the Caribbean and been like, "Those people were cold. I didn't have a good time. I didn't learn someone new."

And we pride ourselves as incredible hosts. We're the best hosts, right? You come to the Caribbean, this is a thing that we just take pride in that you won't find anywhere else. And I think it's some of those elements that, again, we find a way to bring to bear. So, yes, I think rum for sure, I mean, listen, how did my ancestors end up in the Caribbean a couple hundred years ago? Yeah. I mean, drop them on a plantation, that's not sweet, that’s not great, obviously. But what we've been able to build from there and build since then to me is that much more inspiring.

José here…thank you to Marc for sharing your story here…I love the idea of the beauty in the blend. That’s what we’re all about here at Longer Tables. Come back on Wednesday for a few ideas from Marc about how to enjoy his rums, and a recipe for a Daiquiri with Ten To One white rum! (Maybe you want to buy a bottle or two to get ready?)

And at barmini, we’re featuring Ten To One Dark Rum in one of our cocktails…the Cross-Eyed Mary, with dark rum, lime, honey, and a passionfruit espuma. Doesn’t that sound (and look) amazing? Barmini is closed this week for some team R&D, but make sure to join us soon!