Bacardi Reserva Ocho, the rum with a golden touch, is now in India

Rum can be luxurious. Veenu Sandhu finds out how, through a blend until recently consumed only by the Bacardi family

Sipping his drink at a party one evening, a friend remarked, meditatively (some might argue, blasphemously): “Man is one up on God. God made man, but man made rum.” A tall person with a scruffy beard and the look of a sailor, it wasn’t a surprise that his drink of choice was rum. Rough, macho and with the potency to burn your innards, rum was for long associated with sailors and pirates. So much so that in July 1970, when the British Navy discontinued the practice of giving sailors their “tot” (daily ration of rum), the seafarers marked the last