When we began exploring spirits, we were surprised to learn that despite the sugar cane fields in and around the Gulf Coast, there wasn’t a deep history of rum distilling here in Texas.
It seemed such a logical connection. Sugar Land and its historic sugar can fields are right there.
However, Texas was one of the many rum running connections for alcohol-deprived Americans during the Prohibition years (1919-1933). From ships lining the international boundary line in the Gulf Coast, small rum runners picked up rum shipped in by suppliers from Cuba, Puerto Rico, South America, and multiple island distilleries.
You can read more about Texas’s rum running past in Rum on the Run, a history by H.A. Ivy. This tome, written in 1910, has a prohibitionists’ take on the devil spirit.