During a small getaway to Cornwall, RumCask made it down to the Eden Project. It’s an amazing place which everybody should visit at least once; if you can pack it all in during one visit. They have two Biomes which are the main draw to the attraction. One contains a Mediterranean climate and the other a rainforest climate. The rainforest climate Biome is much larger and has diverse array vegetation throughout its different stages, not to mention the warm and muggy climate to go with it!
Once you moved along from the World’s Rainforests section, you enter the crops and cultivation part of the 50 meter tall Biome. In this section, I came across a Bay Rum Tree (Pimenta Racemosa). Obviously being drawn to it, I found it is native to Tropical America. The distillation of the leaves and stems produces an essential oil used in lotions and colognes and contains anti-bacterial properties. Although this oil is essentially rum, the concentrated oil is actually toxic and renders the products undrinkable. Much to our dismay!
Further on we stumbled across a bright colourful truck with the word sugar across it. We had reached the sugar cane! Along side the live crop, Eden had given quite a few signs with a lot of information on sugar and sugar cane. Worldwide it is grown more than wheat in around 26 million hectares in over 90 countries globally! In 2012, this attributed to a worldwide harvest of 1.83 billion tons. Although it was chewed in New Guinea 10,000 years ago, in the 14th century, European luxury consumed a teaspoon per head per year, a far cry from today’s consumption of around 30kg!
A relatively large section of Eden was dedicated to Sugar cane crop, showing just how imperative the crop is not only to the rum world, but the world in general!
