38
MY
ROUSES
EVERYDAY
JANUARY | FEBRUARY 2014
Granulated and boiled into molasses, in brown and powdered form,
cane sugar is not only humanity’s staple sweetener, but the world’s
largest crop (and in the United States, only Florida grows more
than Louisiana). It is also America’s most recent public health
enemy number one and the central villain of so many of history’s
wrongs. Despite, or perhaps because of these reasons, it is easy to
take sugar for granted. Regardless of how many pralines, snowballs
and Rouses king cakes we eat each year, no matter how much we
dream of getting our hands on our favorite Hubig’s pie flavor once
again, the local sugar industry is often overlooked, overshadowed,
and just plain ignored.
But a handful of Louisiana entrepreneurs, artisans, and farmers
are redefining how we look at the State’s sugar industry by taking
locally-grown sugarcane and sugar-based products as a springboard
to develop new beverages.
It should come as no surprise that rum is leading the way. The past
decade-plus has seen a flourishing of small-batch rum distillers
throughout the United States. In Louisiana, this movement
began at New Orleans’s Celebration Distillation. Since entering
the market under the Old New Orleans Rum brand in 1999, all
of Celebration’s tipples, from its Crystal white rum to its recent
cocktail-in-a-bottle, Gingeroo (a blend of white rum, fresh ginger
juice, cayenne, cane syrup, and carbonated water), are distilled from
Louisiana-grown sugarcane molasses.
In late-2012, Donner-Peltier Distillers began distributing craft
spirits with their own “Grain to Glass, Cane to Cocktail” mindset.
The first bottles out of the Thibodaux-based facility was a pair of
liquors (vodka and gin) under the Oryza label, both made from
long-grain rice cultivated in the grainland prairies of Acadia Parish.
The distillery followed up with a trio of rums labeled Rougaroux, for
the mythic werewolf-like creature who stalks the south Louisiana
wilds. The white Sugarshine, dark Full Moon, and praline-tinged
13 Pennies all start with cane sugar grown on the nearby Peltier
family farm, then milled at the Lafourche Sugar Mill.
Bayou Rum, a third local label, crafted in the nation’s largest
privately-owned rum distillery, hit the market this past July. The
product of the Lacassine-based Louisiana Spirits Distillery, both
the Silver and Spiced varieties are fashioned from raw, unrefined
sugarcane and molasses from the M.A. Patout & Son’s Enterprise
Factory, one of eleven raw sugar factories operating in Louisiana
today, and the nation’s oldest family-owned and operated sugar
processing plant.
With a fourth craft distillery soon to begin production in Baton
Rouge, local rum makers are hoping to brand Louisiana as the
nation’s rum capital, just as bourbon is so tightly intertwined with
Kentucky’s economy and image. This most recent project, Cane
Raceland Raw Sugar Mill
