With aspirations of one day establishing a geographical indication (GI) for Louisiana cane juice rums, Olivia Stewart shares how family-owned Oxbow Distillery is pioneering the American rum category.
“My family has been making raw sugar in Louisiana for more than 160 years,” says Olivia Stewart, president of Oxbow Distillery, located in Baton Rouge. “I’m fifth generation. I grew up on the farm and my dad runs the mill. Around 2016, a cousin of mine opened the rum distillery with the mindset that if we have all this sugar cane and access to molasses and cane juice, we should try making rum. And, of course, it’s never as simple as it seems.”
Stewart, who has a masters in art business from Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London, was brought into the fold at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. “I worked in galleries, and I was more on the art dealing side of things, and that’s what I wanted to do with my life. But then Covid hit, and [my dad] asked me to move home and help him make something of the distillery. That’s what I’ve been doing for the past five years.”
Although this may seem like a dramatic swerve away from the career trajectory she was on, Stewart believes this is the path she was meant to take. “I remember one day sitting in the office, just questioning whether I was on the right path, and feeling like I wasn’t being challenged to really do something to my fullest potential. I definitely got what I wished for and more taking over an already struggling facility in a difficult industry during a pandemic. It was eye-opening, to say the least – very challenging.”
While the spirits market was booming during the pandemic, Stewart explains this only really rang true for already established brands, and that opportunities to grow Oxbow were limited. “We weren’t allowed to go out there and sample people and educate the bartenders – those are our storytellers and our education spaces, and they were all shut down. The pandemic was great for the big guys, but really tough on the little guys who didn’t already have their name out there.”
But perseverance got Stewart, her team and the brand through to the other side, and once the Covid vaccine was rolled out and the trade started to reopen, business began to grow. “It was the swift shot in the arm that we needed,” she says.
Single estate rums
Oxbow’s spirits portfolio is made up of all single estate rums. “We’re one of the few in the country with that status,” she confirms. “That means my family owns the cane fields, the sugar mill, and the distillery, and we get to use really rare ingredients, including fresh-pressed raw cane juice, to make rum in the agricole style, and Grade A molasses, which is potentially even rarer than fresh cane juice.” Grade A, Stewart explains, is straight from the raw mill, after boiling syrup just once under vacuum, meaning the sugar has been pulled out only once from this solution. “Not many people have access to such a high grade of molasses,” she says.
As such, Oxbow boasts both cane juice and molasses rums. “I have two lines under the Oxbow Rum Distillery umbrella. Oxbow Estate Rum is additive-free, sugar-free and colour-free, which is hard to find in the rum world. We’re really proud of our raw ingredients and how much work went into planting the cane, growing the cane and processing it, and so we really want the raw ingredient to shine through in the bottle – we don’t want to mask it, cover it up with any kind of additive.”
The Oxbow Estate line includes unaged and aged varieties of both types of rums. In addition, Stewart has created the False River range of flavoured rums, which includes a spiced rum, an aged spiced rum and a Caribbean-style dark rum.
Of these, Stewart says the spiced rum is very popular. “People are familiar with spiced rum, and it’s sweeter – and the southerners love their sweet drinks. Then I would say the white rum is popular – people are familiar with what white rum is. We’re really surprised by how well the Louisiana agricole-style is performing.”
Stewart says she has found consumers to be really intrigued by how different rum can taste. “I mean, rum is the most versatile spirit by far, for better or for worse. There’s not a lot of regulation, so you can do a lot of different things, but it can also hurt the category in some ways. But it’s exciting to be able to educate people about how many different types of rum are out there, and styles and what you can make it from.”
American rum GI
It’s not just the broader rum category that Stewart wants to educate consumers about. “I would like for American rum to be a buzz – an idea that people are familiar with – and for Oxbow to be one of the first brands that comes to mind when you hear ‘American rum’. I think it’s an untapped category with a lot of potential.”
There are approximately 100 or more distilleries across the US that currently make rum, Stewart says, though there is no unifying style. “I think it would be hard to nail down a singular characteristic – it would have to be more regional, or state-based. I know that with my fellow distillers down here in Louisiana, we’re very interested in and have been discussing the potential for a GI for Louisiana cane juice. It’s a very specific cane-growing region here in South Louisiana – we have the Mississippi River Delta that provides incredibly fertile soil for the region, and we have cool nights that really increase the sugar content of the cane. The cane loves cool nights in the fall when we harvest, so you taste the difference.”
Stewart describes the sugarcane produced in Louisiana as boasting a “juiciness”, which she attributes to being grown in “super thick alluvial soil” made of loose clay, silt, and sand in close proximity to the Mississippi River Delta, along with a humid climate and no ocean nearby.
“If you were to taste it, you would know exactly what I mean. Like this richness, almost muddy earthiness, but bright at the same.”
In Oxbow’s agricole-style rum, Stewart believes the terroir really comes through – something that doesn’t always happen with other spirits’ raw ingredients. “The fact that you’re just crushing the cane and immediately fermenting means you’re so close to the land and the earth that it came from. I think that’s exactly what makes for a denomination of geography for a product. And I would love to see that one day. It’s a lengthy process, I know, but you taste the commonality between all of our different cane juice rums. It’s really cool.”
Pioneering the American rum category
The pride Stewart and her team have for their raw ingredient has influenced the casks chosen for the brand’s aged products.
“We age in new charred American white oak.” This, she says is “pretty rare” for rums, as most are aged in used oak for a number of reasons, one being that you can age for longer without the spirit becoming overpowered by the oak, “and consumers tend to want that older age statement”, she explains. In addition, used barrels are cheaper, but when ageing in used oak, not as much colour is imparted from the wood because it’s already given its colour out to the first spirit it housed. “That’s why most often aged rums have caramel colour added to make it look older. We do not do that. I was willing to sacrifice those older eight- to 10-year-old age statements for younger rums with no additives.
“Like I said, we see the cane get planted and processed. We see the entire process, starting from the ground and all that hard work. We don’t want to mask it with the flavour of another spirit. We want you to be able to taste our raw ingredient. The reasoning behind the new American oak is extensive but really important to our brand identity.”
Furthermore, she says, as Oxbow is aiming to pioneer an American style of rum, it has chosen to follow similar rules to a straight Bourbon, by also ageing for a minimum of two years. “We actually have ‘straight rum’ on our label, like a straight Bourbon. That’s not a designation, not an official nomenclature in the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), so we’re actually the first distillery to use that term since the 1930s.”
As well as being a pioneer for the American rum category, Stewart would also like to see a change in the labelling of rums in the US, specifically in terms of allowing for vintages to be stipulated within the sector. “I had to take the vintage year off. We did have it on our label, but the TTB said there was no precedent for that in spirits, only wine. However, every year, we can only make our cane juice style of rum during harvest.” In Louisiana, the harvest is much shorter than in Hawaii and the Caribbean, leaving Oxbow with only 90 days to produce its entire year in supply. “And so each year is different. Drought will stress the cane out and increase sugar yield. If you have a rainy season, it’s going to drop your sugar yield. It’s also going to affect how much water is in the stock and, thus, in your cane wash. Everything influences the results. That’s vintage, and that’s something I would definitely love to change for our labelling here.”
While Oxbow is currently distributed in only a handful of southern states in America, Stewart hopes to expand the brand’s reach in the coming years.
“I would love to be able to educate people using the rum brand, but I don’t like to pinpoint a number of states or where I want to be. That should be dictated by the market in the industry, and as we know, the industry is experiencing a weird downturn. We’ve got tariffs on the horizon. We’ve got RTDs and CBD and all of that shaking things up. I don’t like to assign any minimum number of markets or countries to [our five-year plan].
“We’ve been making sugar for more than 160 years, and the idea with the rum is to have it also be a generational, legacy-driven company.”
Read Full Story at source (may require registration)
Author: Georgie Collins
