Rum Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
46 free Rum trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This rum trivia quiz covers the spirit distilled from sugarcane, from the 'hot, hellish and terrible liquor' first recorded on Barbados in 1651 to the aged sipping rums and tiki cocktails of today. The easy questions handle the basics: what rum is made from, where it was born, the meaning of Nelson's blood, the Cuban home of the mojito and daiquiri, the ginger-beer highball from Bermuda and the bat on the Bacardi bottle. From there it moves through the Royal Navy's daily tot, Admiral Vernon's grog, Black Tot Day, the triangular trade and the New England distilleries that helped spark a revolution. The harder half is for spirits fans and pub-quiz regulars: rhum agricole and cachaça, Jamaican ester marks and John Crow Batty, the Molasses Act, the Rum Rebellion that toppled William Bligh, the world's oldest rum distillery, the largest one, Havana Club's tangled ownership, the NFL's ban on the Captain Morgan pose, and the EU's 2021 rules on what may be labelled rum. If you enjoyed our whisky, gin or cocktail quizzes, this is the deep dive on the sailor's spirit. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries for rum, its major brands, naval traditions and cocktails before publishing.
30 of 46 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Sailor Jerry spiced rum is named after Norman Collins, who was famous in Honolulu as what?
Tattoo artist
Tattoo artist Norman Collins died in 1973, and in 1999 his protégés Ed Hardy and Mike Malone did a deal that put his name and designs on clothing and rum.
Q 02In which region did modern rum originate in the 17th century?
The Caribbean
The Caribbean's sugar plantations gave rise to modern rum, which spread to colonial North America and became the main liquor distilled there.
Q 03A description of Barbados from about 1651 names a liquor 'Rumbullion, alias' what?
Kill-Divil
Kill-Divil, the writer added, was 'a hot, hellish, and terrible liquor', and the word rum is apparently a shortening of rumbullion.
Q 04'Nelson's blood' is a nickname for rum arising from a legend about the admiral's body after which battle?
Trafalgar
Trafalgar killed Nelson, and sailors were said to have secretly tapped the cask carrying his body home, though it probably held another spirit, not rum.
Q 05Demerara rum, the rich style behind the El Dorado brand, comes from which South American country?
Guyana
Guyana once had hundreds of estate distilleries; as they closed, their old stills moved to the lone survivor, Diamond, so their rum styles lived on.
Q 06Which admiral ordered the Navy's rum ration watered down in 1740, creating grog?
Edward Vernon
Edward Vernon's order blamed neat rum, drunk in one go, for ruining sailors' health and morals; his nickname Old Grog, from a grogram cloak, supposedly named the drink.
Q 07How did some Royal Navy crews mark Black Tot Day, the 1970 end of the daily rum ration?
Mock funerals
Mock funerals, with coffins and black armbands, marked the end after the Admiralty judged a midday tot unsafe for sailors operating complex weapons systems.
Q 08Which country's navy was the last in the world to give sailors a daily tot of rum, ending in 1990?
New Zealand
New Zealand's naval chief ended the tot, ruling that a daily issue of strong spirit had no place in a modern, high-technology service.
Q 09Which Royal Navy order, given only by a royal or the Admiralty Board, still brings a tot of rum?
Splice the mainbrace
Splice the mainbrace was once the order for a gruelling repair to a ship's main rigging line, and the seamen who did it were rewarded with extra rum.
Q 10Before hydrometers, sailors checked their rum wasn't watered down by pouring it on what and setting it alight?
Gunpowder
Gunpowder soaked in watered-down rum would not burn, so spirit just strong enough to light it became the benchmark later called '100 proof'.
Q 11What did Royal Navy sailors who chose not to draw their daily rum ration receive instead?
A cash allowance
A cash allowance was set in 1850, when a committee alarmed by drunkenness halved the tot and paid sailors who chose to go without.
Q 12In Disney's 2003 pirate film The Curse of the Black Pearl, who burns a hidden stash of rum to signal for rescue?
Elizabeth Swann
Elizabeth Swann called rum a vile drink that turns respectable men into scoundrels, and her smoke signal soon brought a Royal Navy ship to rescue them.
Q 13Which 1733 act imposed a prohibitive tax on foreign sugar syrup imported into the Thirteen Colonies?
The Molasses Act
Q 21'John Crow Batty', a notoriously harsh Jamaican rum, takes its name from slang for which bird's rear end?
The turkey vulture
The turkey vulture is Jamaica's 'john crow' and 'batty' means backside, so the name mocks a cheap, coarse, illegally made white rum.
Q 22Historically, Jamaican rum marks were graded by the level of which chemical compounds?
Esters
Esters form from acids that microbes make during fermentation, so Jamaica's funkiest high-ester marks need ferments far longer than lighter rums get.
Q 23Under EU rules, which additive may rum contain purely to adjust its colour?
Caramel
Caramel is the only colouring rum may contain, and because rum cannot be flavoured at all, a spiced version cannot legally be sold as plain rum.
The Molasses Act was largely dodged through smuggling and bribed customs officers; the Sugar Act of 1764 revived it with strict enforcement and fed revolutionary anger.
Q 14Roughly how much rum did the average colonial American drink each year before the Revolution, by one estimate?
Three gallons
That is around 14 litres for every man, woman and child.
Q 15Bumbo, the colonial election-day drink of rum, water and sugar, was traditionally spiced with what?
Nutmeg or cinnamon
Nutmeg or cinnamon spiced bumbo, which Virginia candidates poured so freely for voters that the practice was called 'swilling the planters with bumbo'.
Q 16The Rum Rebellion of 1808 in New South Wales deposed which governor?
William Bligh
William Bligh was overthrown after he arrested the rum trader John Macarthur, who then pressed the corps commander to march on Government House.
Q 17During the Prohibition era, what was a 'rum row'?
Liquor ships anchored beyond the US limit
Liquor ships anchored beyond the US limit, out of the government's reach, while high-powered boats raced their cargo ashore past the Coast Guard.
Q 18Which rum cocktail was first mixed at the Soggy Dollar Bar in the British Virgin Islands?
Painkiller
Painkiller is a trademarked name, and when its rum brand made a bar called Painkiller change its name in 2011, bartenders launched a boycott.
Q 19French-style rhum agricole is distilled from what?
Fresh sugarcane juice
Martinique's version won geographical indication protection in 1997 and must be made in a Creole-configuration column still.
Q 20The cane spirit cachaça comes from which country?
Brazil
Brazil's Portuguese rulers banned cachaça and later taxed it heavily, and anger over the tax sparked a revolt around Rio de Janeiro in 1660.
Q 24What inspired the famous logo on Bacardí rum bottles?
Bats roosting in the distillery
Bats roosting in the distillery struck Facundo Bacardí's wife, Doña Amalia, as a good omen, and buyers soon called his product El Ron del Murciélago, the bat rum.
Q 25Where did the Bacardí company set up its global headquarters in 1965?
Hamilton, Bermuda
Hamilton, Bermuda became the firm's home after Fidel Castro's communist government, set up after the 1959 revolution, forced the family business out of Cuba.
Q 26Bacardí's main distillery, nicknamed the 'Cathedral of Rum', stands on which island?
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico is US territory, so when Bacardí began distilling there in 1936 after Prohibition it could ship rum to American buyers without paying import duty.
Q 27Captain Morgan rum is named after a 17th-century privateer of what nationality?
Welsh
Welsh privateer Henry Morgan was shipped to England as a prisoner after sacking Panama in 1671, yet Charles II knighted him and made him Jamaica's deputy governor.
Q 28In 2009, which league banned a Captain Morgan plan to donate $10,000 to charity whenever a player struck the brand's pose?
The NFL
The NFL called it ambush marketing after Philadelphia Eagles tight end Brent Celek raised his knee like the Captain to celebrate a touchdown against the Cowboys.
Q 29Which drinks giant bought the Captain Morgan rum brand in 2001?
Diageo
Diageo sells Captain Morgan everywhere except Jamaica, where the name belongs to an unrelated rum from local distiller J. Wray & Nephew.
Q 30Which Barbados rum maker, backed by a surviving deed from 1703, bills itself as the world's oldest rum brand?
Mount Gay
Mount Gay took the name of manager Sir John Gay Alleyne, whose leadership made the estate thrive so much that its owners renamed the distillery in his honour.