Nicaragua, the largest country in Central America, is famous for its coffee, sugar, tobacco and bananas, but not for its wine. Although agriculture accounts for almost two-thirds of the nation's export profits, vines account for very little, if any, of that.
Given Nicaragua's location at the western edge of the Caribbean, it is hardly surprising that its key alcohol production comes from sugar, rather than grape or grain. As in so many Caribbean countries (notably Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica), sugar became the cash crop of choice for the colony-building empires of the 17th and 18th centuries. From the prolific sugar harvests the European powers gleaned from their tropical new lands, they made not only refined sugar but rum.
The best-known Nicaraguan rum is Flor de Cana (the local Spanish name for 'sugarcane flower'), and like all the best rums it is made from sugar-cane juice rather than molasses. Because of this choice of raw material, Flor de Cana is a golden rum rather than a dark rum such as those from the former British colonies in the region, which used dark molasses to make their richer, dark 'Navy' rums.
The question of whether Nicaraguan wine will ever grace the shelves of wine stores in other nations is, at present, unanswerable. Located between the latitudes of 10 and 14 degrees north, Nicaragua is already far closer to the equator than is standard for the world's wine regions. If climate-change predictions are correct, the already hot, humid climate here will only become even less suited to viticulture. If not, the Nicaraguan government might work to identify a pairing of grape variety and terroir which will enable the country to make wine of acceptable quality. After all, Ecuador, right on the Equator after which it is named, makes wine, and so does Guyana. In the meantime, Nicaraguan rum remains the country's only alcoholic export.
