New laws passed in 1882 rescued pimento from oblivion. Jamaica Scotch Bonnet Pepper Jamaica is well known for spicy dishes like jerked meats and pepperpot soups , making pepper an important ingredient of Jamaican recipes . The hottest peppers are capsicums with paprika toward the bottom of the scale and cayenne toward the top. The fruit matures pale yellow-green to orange or red in about 90 days. It is not clear how early rum production began in the Caribbean, but the early seventeenth century is regarded as the beginning of the rum age in the region, particularly in Spanish and Portuguese territories.
Rum is made from sugar cane using yeast fermentation.
The process, largely secret, combines evaporation, reaction with oak casks and aromatic oxygen absorption to produce the final result. Rum is the oldest spirit liquor. These rums were harsh and unrefined, but improved by mid-century when rum was regularly traded with the American colonies in exchange for meat, flour, salted fish and lumber. If the claim of the Barbadian Mount Gay distilleries is correct, then Jamaica is at least the second oldest producer of rum in the world. J. Wray and Nephew Company and its Appleton rums are the primary rums and spirits from Jamaica.