The Best Rum To Pair With Your Chocolate Desserts

Rum can have a surprisingly wide range of flavors — you've got rich dark rums like Gosling's, refreshing white rums like Malibu or Classico, and spiced varieties like Kraken or Kirkland Signature spiced rum. However, while all rum comes from fermented sugarcane, the spirit doesn't have a naturally sweet flavor as the sugar all turns to alchol during distillation. So, it's more the flavors that come with how each rum is made, barrelled, and what ingredients are added that make certain drinks pair well with certain foods. Dark rum pairs well with coffee, for example, and is also a good choice for drinking with chocolate desserts. It goes especially well with dark chocolate, which is more bitter due to its higher percentage of cocoa.

Chowhound spoke with Robyn Smith, PhD, founder of rum et al. and creator of This Blog's NEAT to get some tips on how to pair chocolate and rum. Smith gave a fairly precise suggestion: "I love pairing rich, dark chocolate desserts with tropically-aged molasses-based rums." In particular, she prefers pairing dark chocolate with Shakara 12-Year Thai Rum, Transcontinental Rum Line Barbados 6-Year 2015, or Hampden Estate Pagos Jamaican Rum, all of which Smith describes as having, "deep, fruity, and complex notes that complement the intensity of dark chocolate."

What exactly is a molasses-based rum, then? It applies to lots of rum. Molasses is one of several byproducts from the sugarcane plant, and is a dark-colored, goopy syrup which is leftover during the production of sugar. Its strong taste has a hint of caramelized sugar with a rich fruity, raisin-like sweetness. It has many uses in baking, and molasses can be substituted for brown sugar or maple syrup in sweet recipes.

Rum that's specifically made with a fermented molasses base is popular in the Caribbean, providing that deep sweet flavor which makes it an ideal accompaniment for dark chocolate desserts like our chocolate mousse, or some rich chocolate salted caramels. This makes it distinct from more punchy French rum (or French Caribbean rum) made from sugarcane juice, which is occasionally called rhum instead. Sometimes, molasses rums in countries like the Dominican Republic are also aged in cherry casks or other barrels which add a subtle fruitiness. The key for dark chocolate then, is aged, rich, sweet and fruity rums.

But if you're not so keen on the bitter side of dark chocolate, there are other pairings to note for sweeter chocolate flavors. White chocolate is sweet enough to complement stronger tasting, more intense rums, and milk chocolate goes well with lighter, less aged rums, because barrel aging adds intense new flavors into the rum which can overpower milk chocolate.