Vietnamese rum is a category that did not exist on most back bars five years ago. Building it abroad has meant explaining terroir to buyers who associate rum with the Caribbean, and explaining Vietnam to drinkers who associate it with coffee and phở.
The argument that works is the same one that works at home: this is cane juice rum from a specific river valley, made by people we can name, in a country with a sugarcane history as old as anyone’s.
Nobody was waiting for another rum. They were waiting for somewhere new to have one.
Export manager, HaLong Rum
What travels, and what does not
The White Rum travels best — bartenders taste it, put it in a Daiquiri and understand it within a minute. Đêm takes longer, because a coffee liqueur at 25% ABV with pandan in it does not map onto anything already on the shelf.
Every market has asked the same first question: is this a rhum agricole? The honest answer is that the method is the same and the place is not, and the place is the whole point.
