The winter wind began to snap the other day and I reached for a bottle of warming spirit: rum. A splash of rum adds pizazz to soups, stews, tomato sauces, gravy, hot drinks such as egg nog, apple cider, hot chocolate, poached dried fruits and baked fresh fruits such as apples and pears, all cold fighters. And it's a perfect sip with Christmas fruitcake.

And like the Jamaican saying that "you can't drive a car without a rearview mirror," you can't bake a West Indies fruit or Christmas cake without rum.

The bracing spirit is made in the Caribbean from sugar cane, and goes back to the days when that part of the world was involved with New England colonists and European traders in the infamous triangle trade, where rum and molasses were exchanged for African slaves.

Not too complex

Past aside, rum is relatively simple to make: Sugar cane is crushed to extract its juice, and then the juice is boiled to a syrup, which separates into sugar and molasses. The sugar is removed and the molasses is fermented and distilled into rum.

Many factors determine rum's final flavor, mainly the producer's techniques and aging. Rum is either light, gold or dark, with the dark rum owing its amber color and mellow flavor to aging in wood barrels.

Rum is produced principally in Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and the Virgin Islands, plus Haiti, Martinique and Guadeloupe in the French-speaking Caribbean. And if you want to see nationalist fervor in all of its glory, just visit the Caribbean and listen to the locals in any rum-producing country talk about how their rum is the best in the world.

I particularly like the fine and exquisite Barbancourt rum of Haiti, and the lovely VSOP Clement rum of Martinique. Both are clear, sparkling, light mahogany in color and, surprisingly, made from cane juice rather than from molasses. These connoisseur rums rival fine cognac and are ideal for sipping straight.

Rhum J.M. VSOP also hails from Martinique, and it is bracing and elegant with a coppery color and muted spice, great for sipping with a wedge of fruitcake. A friend also loves the rather full-flavored St. James rum of Martinique.

But the exquisite Mount Gay Eclipse rum from Barbados is no slouch, either. It has a smoky flavor and fine aroma. For ethereal flavor, it hard to beat Jamaica's lovely burnished Appleton Estate Reserve.

Barcadi Gold Rum, which is light and elegant, is a favored bedtime sipper during the winter. And for cooking I reach for robust Myers's and Captain Morgan from Jamaica, and the moderately priced Brugal Rum Anejo from the Dominican Republic. All warming and bracing, and impart a lovely edge, too.

JOYCE WHITE