Before Prohibition silenced the stills, before the vineyards took root in the East End, before the Hamptons became synonymous with summer wealth, Long Island had a different kind of reputation. It was rum country. And the story of how that heritage was lost and why it matters that we bring it back which is one that most Long Islanders have never heard.
The Triangle Trade and Long Island's Role in It
To understand Long Island's rum history, you have to understand the colonial economy. In the 1700s, the most important trade route in the Atlantic world was the so-called Triangle Trade: molasses from the Caribbean sugar islands traveled north to New England and New York, where it was distilled into rum. That rum was then shipped to West Africa, where it was traded for enslaved people, who were transported to the Caribbean to work the sugar plantations that produced more molasses. It was a brutal, profitable, and deeply interconnected system and Long Island was embedded in it.
The harbors of the North Shore - Oyster Bay, Cold Spring Harbor, and Huntington were active ports in the colonial era. Ships carrying molasses from Barbados, Jamaica, and Antigua docked regularly. Local merchants invested in distilleries. The rum that came out of those stills was not just a luxury item; it was a form of currency, a trade good, and a staple of daily life in a way that is hard to imagine today.
By the mid-1700s, rum was the most consumed spirit in the American colonies. Historians estimate that the average colonial American drank three to four gallons of rum per year. It was served at political meetings, church events, and funerals. George Washington famously distributed rum to voters during his 1758 campaign for the Virginia House of Burgesses. Benjamin Franklin collected proverbs about it. It was, in every sense, the spirit of the era.
Rum Row: Prohibition's Last Stand
Fast forward to 1920. The 18th Amendment takes effect. The manufacture, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquors is prohibited across the United States. Legal distilling stops overnight.
But Long Island, with its miles of coastline, its proximity to New York City, and its tradition of maritime commerce, was not about to go dry quietly. What followed was one of the most colorful chapters in American criminal history: Rum Row.
Rum Row was the name given to the fleet of ships which sometimes were dozens at a time that anchored just outside the three-mile limit of U.S. territorial waters off the Long Island coast, particularly near Montauk and the South Shore. These ships, loaded with rum, whiskey, and gin from Canada, the Bahamas, and Europe, sat just beyond the reach of the Coast Guard and sold their cargo to a fleet of speedboats that ferried the liquor ashore under cover of darkness.
The operation was enormous. At its peak, Rum Row supplied a significant portion of the illegal liquor consumed in New York City. The bootleggers who ran the shore-side operations became local legends. The Coast Guard officers who tried to stop them became increasingly frustrated. And the ordinary Long Islanders who lived along the coast and many of whom were happy to look the other way, and some of whom were actively involved developed a complicated relationship with the law that persisted for decades.
Rum Row ended with Prohibition's repeal in 1933. The ships dispersed. The bootleggers moved on. And the rum heritage of Long Island - both the legitimate colonial-era distilling tradition and the wilder Prohibition-era chapter faded from public memory.
The Long Silence
After Prohibition, American drinking culture shifted. Whiskey, bourbon and rye reclaimed its place as the dominant American spirit. Rum, associated with the Caribbean and with a colonial past that many Americans preferred not to examine too closely, faded into the background. It became a mixer, a vacation drink, something you put in a pina colada.
Long Island, meanwhile, found its identity in other things. The vineyards of the North Fork began producing serious wine in the 1970s. The Hamptons became a cultural shorthand for a certain kind of East Coast wealth. The island's maritime and agricultural heritage was celebrated, but the rum chapter was largely forgotten.
No Long Island distillery of note emerged in the post-Prohibition era. The knowledge, the equipment, the traditions and all of it was gone. What remained was a landscape that still had everything rum needed: a maritime climate, agricultural land, a community with deep roots in the food and beverage world, and a history that was waiting to be rediscovered.
Why We Started NorthFork Distillers
When we set out to build NorthFork Distillers, we were not trying to recreate the colonial rum trade or romanticize the bootleggers of Rum Row. We were trying to do something simpler and more honest: make great rum on Long Island, and make it in a way that acknowledges where we come from.
The North Fork is one of the most distinctive agricultural regions in the Northeast. The same maritime climate and sandy loam soil that makes the wine here so good also shapes the character of everything grown and produced in this place. We wanted to make a rum that tasted like it came from here and not from a mass production factory, not from a contract distillery somewhere else, but from this specific piece of land.
We also wanted to make rum that was worth drinking. Not a novelty item. Not a souvenir. Five expressions which are: Silver, Spiced, Berry, Lemonade, and Apple Pie. Each of these expressions have a distinct character, each made with real ingredients, each at 41% ABV and 82 proof because that is the sweet spot for a rum that mixes beautifully and sips honestly.
The history is the context. The rum is the point. But knowing where you come from makes everything you do more meaningful and we think it makes the rum taste better, too.
"The history is the context. The rum is the point. But knowing where you come from makes everything you do more meaningful."
NorthFork Distillers
Long Island has been making rum, in one form or another, for three hundred years. We are the latest chapter in that story. We intend to make it a good one.
NorthFork Distillers is located at 194-26 Morris Avenue, Holtsville, New York 11742. Our rum is available online or at our corporate loaction. Contact us at [email protected] for wholesale and distribution inquiries.
