The History of Hawai'ian Sugar Cane and Rhum Agricole (In Person)
Taught by Sarah Lohman
Sarah Lohman is a culinary historian and the author of the bestselling books Endangered Eating: America’s Vanishing Foods and Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine. She focuses on the history of food as a way to access the stories of diverse Americans. Endangered Eating was a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and was named one of the Best Books of 2023 by Amazon’s Editors, Food & Wine, and Adam Gopnik on the Milk Street podcast. It was a finalist for the Nach Waxman Prize for Food & Drink Scholarship and winner of the Ohioana Library Book Prize for Nonfiction. Lohman’s work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and NPR. Lohman has lectured across the country, from the Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington, DC to The Culinary Historians of Southern California
Sugar cane was one of the first plants brought with settlers from Tahiti to Hawai’i several thousand years ago. After Europeans arrival and American colonization, sugar cane plantations were often a gateway for Asian immigrants, who worked brutal jobs in the cane fields before immigrating to the American mainland. But as plantations grew, unique, heirloom sugar cane varieties disappeared. Additionally, the last sugar refinery in Hawaii closed in 2016, and the land that historically grew cane for 200 years sits fallow.
Will the changes in Hawai’i’s cane industry mean the end of heirloom sugar cane, or should the difficult and dangerous process of growing and refining cane die out? Journey with me as we visit Hawai’i and the recently closed HC&S refinery, and trace the story of sugar’s imperialist takeover of Hawai’i.
Then, we’ll talk about a series of new distilleries that make rhum agricole, a process that distills from the pressed juice of heirloom sugar cane. This unique rhum may be the key to saving endangered sugar cane.
We'll taste rhum agricole and a cocktail made with it during the talk!
