The Best American Rums

The small-batch pot-still rum is sourced from the Caribbean and blended and bottled at the A. Smith Bowman Distillery located in Fredericksburg, Virginia. It comes in at 40% ABV.

Bayou Select Rum starts with Louisiana-grown sugarcane distilled twice in copper pot-stills in Lacassine, LA. Prior to bottling, it’s aged in ex-bourbon barrels for up to three years. The Bayou line of rums also includes Satsuma, Spiced, and Silver expressions.

This Pennsylvania distillery uses 100% turbinado, a raw sugar rather than a processed molasses in an attempt to produce a softer product. The Distillery's name refers to the raucous and rowdy Bob Dylan song of the same name. They produce several rum bottlings, this one is their standard-proof, unaged version.

Based in high-altitude Crested Butte, Colorado, and making use of local snow-melt spring water, Montanya Distillers offers a unique approach and story. They offer funky, island-style rums from their snowy setting, using sugarcane from Louisiana, and utilizing used barrels from Stranahan's Whiskey for their aging. A three-year-old "Montyana Anejo" is due for release soon, which will finish the Oro in several different casks.

Bayou Rum is the brainchild of Louisiana Spirits founders Tim and Trey Litel and Skip Cortese, who sought to bring back the lost art of local rum production. To make Bayou, they use a mixture of Louisiana sugarcane molasses and raw sugar from M.A. Patout and Son, Ltd. The white is a pot-still rum with triple-filtered spring water, bottled unaged.

This Rhode Island rum is made with distilled blackstrap molasses before aging at least two years in oak barrels. The distillers of Newport Distilling Co. researched the archives of the Newport Historical Society for recipes and traditional distilling methods and applied this information to the creation of their rum.

Made from regional sugarcane syrup and molasses, St. Augustine is fermented, aged and pot-distilled on site in the eponymous city. It is bottled at 45% ABV. The resulting color is pale straw.

Starting in 2013, Lyon Distilling Co. a small startup distillery out of Maryland, has been using 26-gallon pot stills to make several different rums and ryes. The most popular is their Dark Rum, an unaged rum that begins as a 50:50 mixture of blackstrap molasses and evaporated cane juice. After being distilled twice, it’s colored with a batch of spirit caramel whipped up for each production run. Finally, it’s bottled in a distinctive, eye-catching bottle.

Kōloa’s dark rum offering is unaged and "enhanced" with additional caramelized sugars. Their rum, produced on the island of Kaua’i, is distilled in a copper pot still from crystallized sugar.

Siesta Key Silver rum is distilled in small batches through copper stills using only the hearts of each run. It is bottled at 40% ABV.