Don't Cry Over Spilled Rum

Have you ever had a moment during a vacation when something didn't seem so funny at the time, but, later on, you did appreciate the humor?

During our recent vacation in Charleston, South Carolina, we had one of this moments.

It all started with a Striped Pig.

A Striped Pig Distillery, that is.

Distilleries are popping up all over the country, it would seem. So, I was interested in seeing what Charleston had to offer.  Two years ago, we had visited a moonshine distillery in Asheville, North Carolina and I wanted to compare and contrast.

Moonshine, for those outside our country, is basically an unaged whiskey, usually made from corn but sometimes rye and barley can be used in addition to the corn.  I am not a fan of legal moonshine, but my spouse will drink it.

(Incidentally, moonshine is perfectly legal to distill, with the proper licenses.  I am NOT discussing the homemade, illicit moonshine that most people think of - although that would be an interesting blog post if I did know more about it. )

This distillery offered moonshine, vodka, and rum.  A distillery making rum is a bit unusual in our area of the country, so we wanted to check this out.  We did, liked what we tasted, and decided to buy a bottle of rum.

We approached the end of our vacation, the bottle of rum riding comfortably in the trunk of our car, or so we thought.

We started to pack the car and - let's put this gently, the trunk of our car smelled like a distillery.  The smell was so strong, it almost knocked us over.  Even in the part of the car where we ride, the smell was quite obvious.

More to the point, it smelled like the Striped Pig Distillery.

We discovered that the bottle of rum had not been riding comfortably in the car trunk.  Unlike large commercial rum bottles, this had been corked, with a tiny tape.  And it hadn't been sealed.

The cork had popped in the Charleston 80 degree heat and almost the entire bottle of rum had soaked the trunk of our car, and the contents that had been left in the trunk.

We left Charleston hoping a policeman didn't need to pull us over for some reason.  But a couple of our friends may be getting - well, fragrant, gifts.  I do think we will be laughing at this one day, and not just because we were breathing in all those rum fumes for hours.

The distillery, by the way, was interesting and I plan to blog about it at a future date.

Do you have a story of a vacation situation that wasn't funny at the time?