There are actually two kinds of rum, white rum and dark rum. Your white rums are your Bacardis, really bad rail rum, and Malibu.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rum#Grades

Rum is an alcoholic beverage made from sugar cane. Things can be added to it.

- White or light rum is unaged and filtered. It can be good, it can be bad. Cachaca is essentially white rum made from cane juice; light rum is rum made from molasses and filtered.

- Gold rum is aged and filtered. It can be good, it can be bad.

- Dark rum is aged and filtered. It's aged longer in more heavily charred barrels than gold rum.

- Flavored rum is rum with sorority girl shit added to mask the shite quality of the rum. Often lots of sorority girl shit. Lookin' at you, Malibu, you delicious, dirty whore.

- Spiced rum is rum with spices added to mask the shite quality of the rum. Often lots of spices. These are your Captain Morgain, your Sailor Jerry's.

Bears repeating: Sailor Jerry's is not dark rum. It's SPICED rum. And, much like flavored coffee allows vendors to use robusta beans (which smell like burning tires) instead of arabica beans, spicing allows pretty much any cane juice to be turned into an alcoholic beverage.

The traditional dark rum is Myers'. It is pretty good. Whalers' and Goslings' are also pretty good. However, if you're expecting Captain Morgan, you're going to be disappointed.

It's an unfortunate side effect of geopolitics that whisky is made in regions where privileged white people can drink it while rum is made in regions where downtrodden brown people can drink it. Rum is every bit as sensitive to input, distillation and aging as scotch or bourbon, but it rarely gets the chance. My father, when he was in Brazil, was fond of a cachaca that charged more for the bottle deposit than it did for the alcohol within.

Personally, I'm rather fond of Hana Bay white, particularly when mixed with guava juice. It's difficult to find outside of Hawaii, however. It tastes more like gin than it does like Bacardi. And I didn't fully understand "rum" until I had Havana Club - not the bacardi knock off, the actual Cuban shit that's embargoed in the US. I fully believe the only reason Bacardi has the name it does is paleolithic cocktail culture - up until the peak of the swingin' 50s, Bacardi was Cuban rum, not Puerto Rican rum, and believe you me, there's a difference.

FUN FACT: The Mai Tai, invented in California in the '40s, had an evil doppelganger one could find in Hawaii consisting of a float of dark rum, a float of spiced rum, a float of anejo rum, a float of silver rum and a float of 151 in a highball glass with a long straw to sample among. I've served them from time to time just because I can.

The "I Dare You" Drink: The Molotov Cocktail

A friend of mine (who tends toward Gentleman Jack) saw my bar (back when it was impressive - six cabinets, probably 150 bottles) and asked for a cocktail. I asked him what he liked. He said "A Molotov Cocktail" (he used to have lyrics from Ted Nugent's "Stranglehold" in his .sig). I asked him what was in one. He said

"You're the bartender, you tell me."

So in the interests of revolution, adventure and the caribbean, I invented one.

- 1 oz Vodka (for the Russian)

- 1 oz Gran Marnier (for the French)

- 1 squirt lemon juice

Shake with ice.

- 1 martini glass

Rub rim with lemon juice. Dip in superfine sugar.

- 1/2 oz Bacardi 151 (for the Caribbean)

pour gran marnier and vodka in the martini glass. Float 1/4" 151 on top.

Light.

Hand to victim. Instruct them not to blow it out until it's partially caramelized the sugar. Then warn them that the edge is likely to be hot.

Fucking delicious, but must be drunk with care.