Martha Washington’s Revolutionary Rum Punch

The History

In many ways, The United States of America is a country founded on drinking and sugar. When Christopher Columbus arrived in the new world, he didn’t find the land flush with gold and spices he expected, but found something entirely more unique, sugar. Sugar was extremely rare in Europe and when Columbus brought back sugarcane from his voyages to “The New World,” sugar hysteria hit Europe. The world has never been the same since.

Being flush with sugar, The Colonies discovered they could distill molasses into alcohol to create even more valuable rum, which soon became a large part of their economy. Rum and sugar were so valued, they were even used as a form of currency in trading. An awful side effect of the massive popularity of the beverage was the start of The Triangular Trade to provide labor for the sugar plantations in the Caribbean, leading to the rise of slavery in the Americas.

Not only were distilled beverages safer to drink, colonial Americans believed them to be a medicinal cure-all. It would have been common to start the day with hard cider, have a beer after work, and end the day with a nightcap. Many of the Founding Fathers even had their own personal breweries. Rum was the undisputed favorite with an estimated average 3.7 gallons of the stuff consumed annually per person by the time of…