Welcome to our book series „Bukowski SHOTS“ – Digital Edition.
We’ve decided to make the book „Bukowski SHOTS – A Guide to Mixed Drinks“ available to the public for free. It was created during the pandemic as a way to survive tough times—both financially and mentally—and today, we are gradually releasing it in an online format.
Each installment = one chapter or section from the book, adapted for the web. At the end of every article, you’ll find a link to the next part so you can keep reading seamlessly.
And once we get to the actual shots, you can look forward to our personal recommendations and those classic „bar bizarre“ notes that are simply part of the Bukowski experience.
Rum
Thomas Walduck was a British sea captain who lived around the same time as Juraj Jánošík. Precisely during the years when Jánošík was plundering in the mountains of Central Europe, Walduck was writing highly valuable letters about life in the new colony of Barbados, where he spent a total of fourteen years. In one of his letters, he also wrote a memorable quote:
“In the new Caribbean settlements they established, the Spaniards built a church first. The Dutch, on the other hand, would construct a fort first. But the English, even in the most remote part of the world, even if surrounded by barbarian Indians, opened a tavern to begin with.”
It is therefore no surprise that the invention of rum is credited precisely to the English. They combined their knowledge of distillation with the accidental discovery of a local, low-grade fermented molasses mash. This happened sometime after 1600, and likely right on the island of Barbados, where Captain Walduck later stayed.
But how did the word itself come about? According to the Concise Etymological Dictionary of the Slovak Language, it was derived from the word rumbustion, which translates as noisy, roaring, wild, or tumultuous—which perfectly matches the reality of (not only) the early days of drinking this beverage. Furthermore, in 1661, the word rumbullion appeared for the first time in a document by the Governor of Jamaica. This was a corruption of the word rebellion, which confirms this origin. Rum was thus named as a drink that fuels rebellion and turbulence. Another name used for rum that didn’t stick, kill-devil, carries a similar connotation.
The Slovak Etymological Dictionary states that the word rum only began to be used in our region in the 19th century. Why so late, when the English had been happily enjoying it two hundred years earlier? The answer is simple: the empire to which the territory of Slovakia belonged had limited access to the sea, and therefore to the sugar cane needed for its production. For many years, rum was likely just an exotic whim of eccentrics from distant lands. Until…
Until 1832, when an Austrian alcohol producer named Sebastian Stroh came up with his own recipe for making rum that was not as dependent (or dependent at all) on sugar cane, meaning it could be produced at an affordable price for the general public. It was made from neutral culinary spirit with added flavorings that created a more distinct, characteristic taste. The production of this Austro-Hungarian rum spread throughout the monarchy and became highly popular in places like the Czech lands and Slovakia. People called the product by the exact same name—rum. In other countries, our domestic rum was also nicknamed „tea rum.“
However, in 2004, upon entering the European Union, only a beverage produced by distilling sugar cane could legally bear the name rum in our country. Therefore, producers had to use their wit (um) and come up with new names in which people could easily recognize the traditional drink. In the Czech Republic, the name Tuzemák (Domestic) became the most successful, while in our country, it was simply—Um.
