How the sweet success of sugar spread around the world
Beautiful Botanicals by Joanne Howdle
Sugar cane is one of the oldest and most widely cultivated botanicals in the world. It is a species of tall, perennial grass in the genus Saccharum, used in the production of sugar.
The botanical belongs to the Poaceae family, a ubiquitous and economically important family of flowering plants including maize, rice, and wheat.
The genus Saccharum includes species of domesticated sugar cane and their wild relatives. The wild species of sugar cane include Robust Sugar Cane (Saccharum robustum), native only to the island of New Guinea, and Wild Sugar Cane (Saccharum spontaneum), native to tropical and sub-tropical Africa, Asia, and Australasia.
The original domesticated sugar cane species cultivated to produce sugar is known as Noble Cane (Saccharum officinarum), whilst hybrid domesticated sugar cane grows in India and China.
Sugar cane grows to between to and six metres in height with stout, jointed, fibrous stalks that are rich in sugar (sucrose), which accumulates in the stalk internodes. When harvested, sugar cane is cut just above the root level so new sprouts will grow, ready to be harvested again in 10-12 months.
The common name “sugar” derives from Sanskrit, the ancient Indo-European language of India. The Sanskrit word śárkar means “gravel” and sugar is indeed a kind of gravel.
As the botanical and the technique to refine it was traded and spread west, the word changed to sukkar in Arabic and eventually sucre in Middle French and English. The word “cane” came into use alongside “sugar” when the botanical was grown on plantations in the Caribbean, where vast numbers of African people were forcibly transported and enslaved throughout the 18th century.
By the end of the 18th century the British and French colonies in the Caribbean produced 80 per cent of the world’s sugar.
While archaeological evidence indicates people chewing the wild species of sugar cane for its sweet taste in prehistory, the first indication of the domestication of the botanical is circa 8000 BC. Archaeological evidence suggests the indigenous people of New Guinea first domesticated sugar cane.
From circa 8000 BC to 640 AD, sugar cane cultivation practices spread throughout south-east Asia, India and China via seaborne traders, becoming a truly global botanical.
During the 9th and 10th centuries, sugar cane was grown extensively in southern Europe and soon spread to Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean and Zanzibar in East Africa. The botanical was first recorded in England in 1099, after Crusaders returning home from the Holy Land introduced “the sweet salt” to Europe.
Sugar cane reached the Americas in the 15th century, arriving first in Brazil by way of Portuguese traders. The first sugar cane planted in the Americas was a gift from the governor of the Canary Islands to the Italian explorer and navigator Christopher Columbus.
In Ancient Greece and Rome, sugar was used in traditional medicine. Imported from India, lumps of sugar were either chewed or dissolved in water and drunk to help relieve indigestion and other stomach ailments, bladder, or kidney pain. The botanical was also used to treat wounds.
Sugar cane is a natural agricultural resource as it can be used as a biofuel and fertiliser. The main by-products of sugar cane are bagasse which is used to power sugar mills, and molasses used in the manufacture of alcohol. Sugar cane and molasses have historically been used to make a variety of different spirits like rum and cachaça.
Sugar cane can also be used to make the neutral grain spirit used in gin production. In gin manufacture, the sugar cane essences add a sweet and slightly fruity flavour to the spirit.
• Joanne Howdle is interpretation and engagement manager at the multi-award-winning Dunnet Bay Distillers Ltd.
