Before bourbon, America ran on rum. That is not a marketing line for the semiquincentennial — it is simply what the record says, and most people find it surprising.
So as the United States marks 250 years, here is the case that rum, not whiskey, is the original American spirit.
New England was a rum region
By the mid-1700s the colonies had dozens of rum distilleries, concentrated in New England — Boston, Newport, Medford. They imported molasses from the Caribbean and distilled it locally, and the output was enormous relative to the population.
Rum was not a niche drink. It was the working spirit of colonial America: in taverns, in ships' stores, in wages, in trade. Whiskey as a commercial product came later, largely after the Revolution, when grain was abundant inland and Caribbean molasses was not.
It was political
The Molasses Act of 1733 and the Sugar Act of 1764 were both, fundamentally, about rum — British attempts to tax the molasses trade that colonial distilleries depended on. They were among the grievances that hardened colonial opinion well before 1776.
Rum was also a fixture of colonial politics in a more literal sense. Candidates supplied it at elections; voters expected it. The phrase "swilling the planters with bumbo" described exactly that practice.
And it was drunk in the taverns where independence was argued into being, because that is where the arguing happened.
Why it faded
Supply. The Revolution disrupted Caribbean molasses, and after independence the trade never fully recovered its old shape. Meanwhile settlers moving west found grain easier to grow than sugarcane was to import. Whiskey took the position rum had held, and kept it.
What followed was two centuries of rum being treated as a holiday drink rather than a serious one — which is, in part, how the category ended up with so few rules about sugar and age statements.
Our salute
Bombarda is an American rum company, founded in South Florida by Captain James Papagno to honor his father George, a United States Navy veteran. Our rums are named for the guns that decided the age of sail.
For the anniversary we built the America 250 On Deck set — a bottle of Capitana, our 8 year single-origin Panamanian private cask, paired with a handmade garrison carriage built in Texas.
Capitana is named for the Capitana El Rubí, flagship of the 1733 Nueva España treasure fleet, which sailed from Havana on a Friday the 13th and wrecked on the reefs of the Florida Keys the next day. She rests there still, off Plantation Key. An American rum named for a wreck in American waters.
The set is available through 2026 only. On 1 January 2027 it is retired, and there will be no reissue. An anniversary release that outlives its anniversary is just a product.
See the America 250 On Deck set · More rum history in Captain's Chronicles
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