Fr'um: the spiced rum swapping sweetness for savoury smoke

Dark rum is enjoying a renaissance and its top expressions are now gaining respect as drinks to sip and savour like Scotch or Cognac. At the same time, its growing popularity in cocktails is driving demand in bars – on-trade rum sales surpassed £1bn in 2023, overtaking those of whisky. Mixologists are using characterful dark rums to replace whisky in classic cocktails like the Old Fashioned. ‘People are starting to appreciate darker and more complex expressions of rum,’ says Anthony Peart, bar manager at Tom Kerridge’s two Michelin-starred pub The Hand & Flowers, who recently released his own rum brand – Fr’um – to the market. ‘Bartenders and consumers are more educated now, which is creating a shift towards more premium, well-crafted rums.’

Proust had his tea-soaked madeleines and Márquez his bitter almonds, but for Peart it was the scent memory of jerk pork and Scotch bonnets slowly roasting on the barbecue in Jamaica as a child that provided inspiration for his rum. With time on his hands during lockdown, Peart pitched the idea of a RTD rum cocktail served in nostalgic, Capri Sun-style pouches to Kerridge as a way of keeping the bar side of the business ticking along during the pandemic, but fate had other plans.

With Fr’um, I want people to think of fruity chillis and pineapple upside-down cake

Having followed him with interest online, the owners of the nearby Henley Distillery approached Peart to see if he’d be interested in collaborating with them on a rum. ‘It was a great way to get into it without owning any equipment. I knew I wanted to do something with pineapple and Scotch bonnets, and having an expert to help bring my idea to fruition was an amazing opportunity,’ says Peart, who drew on his 24 years of bartending experience to create Fr’um.

‘The goal was to make a vibrant and complex rum that’s smooth enough to sip neat but also shines in cocktails,’ he says. ‘I wanted it to be bold in flavour but approachable in style. I’m serious about what I’m doing but I wanted the brand to be fun.’ Knowing he had to tread carefully due to the fiery heat of Scotch bonnets, nailing the recipe took several attempts. ‘I wanted to get that paprika and bell pepper flavour from the chillis without the overbearing heat from the acid,’ Peart says. During his trials to create the Scotch bonnet syrup added to the rum base, he swapped caster sugar for muscovado to achieve a greater depth of flavour and texture. ‘I was after that toffee, caramel and almost copper-like flavour you get from muscovado,’ says Peart, who sources his base rum from the Dominican Republic and pineapples from Costa Rica.

During his flavour trials, Peart had to dial down the level of spice in the syrup to give his rum broad appeal, finding that the roasted Scotch bonnets needed a mere six minutes in the sugar syrup to deliver the ideal flavour profile. At the same time, Henley Distillery was playing around with different spiced rum blends to pair with it. The top three were presented to Peart to choose from. ‘I went for the one featuring Japanese green tea, cinnamon, cacao and pink peppercorns. It had so many layers of flavour and reminded me most of what I was trying to achieve,’ he says. ‘The pink peppercorn pairs really well with the pineapple and the rum allowed my syrup to shine.’

Fr'um founder Anthony Peart — Peart is eager to see the brand grow, hinting that a liqueur and an RTD might be in the pipeline

While Fr’um has a spiced rum base, Peart is keen to stress that it’s different to most of the spiced rums on the market. ‘It has no way near enough sugar to be categorised as a spiced rum but I describe it as such as I want to disrupt the sector,’ he says. ‘When people hear the term “spiced rum” they think of vanilla, sugar and a high level of essence. With Fr’um, I want them to think of fruity chillis and pineapple upside-down cake.’

With spicy riffs on classic cocktails popping up on drinks menus all over the globe, Fr’um is perfectly poised to ride the savoury cocktail wave. ‘Chefs are using Fr’um in desserts and bartenders are mixing it into an Old Fashioned to add a smoky element, or a sprinkle of salt in a Daiquiri,’ says Peart, who designed the rum specifically to pair with fiery ginger beer, giving the classic Dark and Stormy an even more tempestuous twist.

It’s just me, a colander and a sieve

A portmanteau of ‘rum’ and ‘fro’ – the nickname Kerridge gave Peart when he started growing his hair – Fr’um scooped a Gold medal at last year’s IWSC awards; an accolade Peart says has given the brand ‘validation and credibility’. While the focus is currently on the rum, Peart isn’t ruling out the idea of adding a liqueur and an RTD to the Fr’um range in the future.

Fr’um is currently available through selected retailers, including Master of Malt, for £45 a bottle. Peart says the price reflects the ‘quality and craftmanship’ involved in its production, with each batch yielding just 326 bottles. In keeping with the current thirst for small batch rums, Fr’um is about as artisan as it gets; Peart still presides over every batch of the pineapple and Scotch bonnet syrup used in its creation, and soon hopes to be making the rum from Scotch bonnets grown on his own allotment. As he says: ‘It’s just me, a colander and a sieve.’