Taiwan’s Bold New Voice in Rum: Where Chinese Baijiu Tradition Meets Caribbean Soul
By 有趣酒業 (Funny Distillery), Shulin District, New Taipei City
In the world of spirits, innovation often comes from unexpected places. Taiwan — known for high-tech prowess, tea culture, and a recent rise in single malt whisky — now offers the global community something entirely fresh: a new category added to the world rum, Taiwanese Rum, inspired by the traditions of Chinese baijiu.
Welcome to the world of Taiwanese Rum, a bold fusion of East and West created by Funny Distillery (有趣酒業), a craft urban distillery tucked into the cultural-industrial heartbeat of Shulin, New Taipei City. Their mission: to reshape how rum can taste, how it can be made, and what it can represent in a multicultural age.
Bridging the Aromas: An Asia Island to the Caribbean
At the heart of this innovation lies an unusual cultural and technical bridge. Before funding the Funny Distillery, the team was working in the largest Chinese whisky distillery in Sichuan, China. Sichuan Province is also a cradle of Chinese baijiu. While most rum producers look to Jamaica, Martinique, or Demerara for stylistic guidance, the Funny team turned inward, dissecting the richly categorised aroma families of baijiu and finding parallels with rum’s own diversity.
Chinese baijiu, often misunderstood in the West, has an internal taxonomy of more than a dozen officially recognized aroma types — from the light and floral Qingxiangxing (清香型) to the dense and savory Jiangxiangxing (醬香型), famously embodied by Moutai.
Funny Distillery has now applied these baijiu classifications directly to rum. Not metaphorically, but literally — through ingredient choices, fermentation design, distillation technique, and even naming conventions.
The Birth of Taiwan’s and the World First “Aroma-Style” White Rums
The result is a pair of rums that stand apart from any other white rum on the market:
1. Qingxiangxing Lanmubaijiu (Light Flavour White Rum) 清香型白蘭姆酒
ABV: 42%
Key Ingredients: Taiwanese brown sugar, malted barley
Profile: Crisp sugarcane clarity, green apple skins, pink Taiwanese rice jelly (涼糕), subtle banana milkshake and taro paste
2. Jiangxiangxing Lanmubaijiu (Sauce Flavour White Rum) 醬香型白蘭姆酒
ABV: 53%
Key Ingredients: Taiwanese brown sugar, malted barley
Profile: Caramel and coconut on entry, robust grain and spice mid-palate, finishing with mint chocolate and a savoury acid note evocative of fine baijiu
These rums are not aged in barrels. Instead, they mature briefly to harmonise before bottling, preserving the clarity of their fermentation-driven character — just like baijiu. Yet despite their clarity, they offer surprising depth and complexity.
How It’s Made: East Asian Logic Meets Craft Rum Science
Rather than rely solely on molasses and fast fermentation, Funny Distillery takes 2 different styles of production approaches adapted from Chinese methods:
1. Solo-Mashing and Solo-Distillation (清蒸清燒)
In Chinese, it means “steaming the rice separately and distilled the mash separately”. Funny Distillery mixed Taiwanese brown sugar with hot water and mashed with a small amount malted barley to feed the yeast, cooled and fermented, then double-distilled by using a modified Lomond still. This clean spirit forms the basic body of the rum.
2. Mixed-Mashing and Solo-Distillation (混蒸清燒)
A “dunder-like” technique in Chinese baijiu — hot spent stillage (酒糟, or pot ale) from the previous batch is added to a fresh batch of brown sugar for a new fermentation. This backset adds layered esters and a funky, rich complexity. The resulting spirit is then blended with the first to balance aroma and structure.
The Qingxiangxing Lanmubaijiu (Light Flavour White Rum) just like the name, is a combination of the white rum made from solo mashing and mixed mashing. The
Jiangxiangxing Lanmubaijiu (Sauce Flavour White Rum), can be easily understood that further intensifies mixed mashing method by running multiple fermentation/distillation cycles with partial dunder replacement in each stage — akin to the “multi-round fermentation” found in sauce-aroma baijiu.
The Cultural Subtext: Everyday Drink or Statement Spirit?
Funny Distillery doesn’t just craft spirits. It crafts meaning.
The Qingxiangxing, a humble yet iconic light-aroma, is created to pair easily with everyday foods — grilled meats, dry noodles, stir-fries — and carries a sense of urban community identity.
The Jiangxiangxing, by contrast, takes aim at the different and exclusivity end. It’s bold, unapologetic, and intentionally provocative. The appearance can be found a hint of similarity to the most expensive baijiu in China. “We won’t get forgiveness — but we don’t care,” the label proclaims. “You drink this not to conform, but to rediscover your true self.” It’s a bottle that celebrates rebellion and ritual at once.
Each label uses traditional baijiu design cues — brushwork, seal script, and vertical format — fused with minimalist typography. Although the products name “white rum” but they are intentionally hybrid the name “lanmu-baijiu” means “baijiu-style rum”, written entirely in Hanyu Pinyin using baijiu’s naming rules.
What This Means for the Global Rum Scene
Globally, craft rum is enjoying a surge now. Producers are embracing terroir, reviving pot stills, and exploring unconventional cask aging. Yet few have reimagined rum so radically in terms of aroma type — drawing from an entirely different spirits culture as inspiration. Funny Distillery, the creative spirits explorer, try to start a conversation “could rum lovers enjoy a new Taiwanese aroma-style rum and recognised it as a new category?”
This is not only a copying of Caribbean style but hybridising the root of eastern and western and evolving. This is what rum lovers want to see and taste. These new aroma-styles don’t need to compete with Agricole or Demerara; they introduce a third axis to the rum flavour map.
Final Thoughts: A Challenge to Rum Identity
Is a rum still rum if it smells like baijiu?
Is a baijiu still baijiu if it’s made with sugarcane?
Funny Distillery doesn’t answer these questions. It asks them — in a bottle.
With its signature blend of humor (有趣 means “funny/interesting”), technical precision, and fearless cultural mixing, the distillery is redefining what a Taiwanese spirit can be. These rums may be white, but they are anything but neutral.