Nicaraguan rum?

Factual Questions
1

I ducked into a local pan-Latin grocery store yesterday (La Unica near Clark & Devon, for you Chicago-area folks), just to look around and see what kind of stuff they have to make mental notes for later (you never know when you will have a burning desire to acquire a random ethnic grocery item, at least not if you’re me). They had all kinds of neat stuff: a zillion kinds of quince paste, yuca, various tropical fruits, Colombian coffee, etc.

But then I ran into the liquor section. They had some things you might expect: Kahlua, some cheap cooking wine, Dos Equis, Negra Modelo…and at least half a dozen brands of Nicaraguan rum. There was more Nicaraguan rum than all other kinds of rum combined.

Nicaraguan rum? I guess if you think about it, it’s not such an odd idea, but then why have I never heard of it or seen it sold anywhere else (and believe me, I’ve explored a lot of offbeat ethnic grocvery stores)? It wasn’t competing on price, that’s for sure: most of the brands were over $20 for a 750 ml bottle, or about double the usual price of something mainstream like Bacardi.

So please explain this phenomenon. Have I been missing out on something good all this time? Is there just a nearby neighborhood of homesick Nicaraguans that I didn’t know about? Is Nicaraguan rum just as good as Cuban, but without the embargo? Or is this store just an oddity?

2

Flor de Caña in particular is a very good and very popular Nicaraguan rum. The finer aged varieties are comparable in quality to good Cuban rums, and it is probably the brand most most favored by my friends (and me too) here in Panama.

3

Thanks! And here I was thinking I was continuing to set the record for GQ threads in which nobody posts.

(If anyone else out there knows anything, of course, please feel free.)