To distil a fermented fruit, grain, sugarcane juice, etc. in such a way that the pleasant flavours are retained while the unpleasant ones are eliminated, requires great skill and special distilling techniques. This is discussed in detail and illustrated by means of a commercial rum still. It is also shown that the high-purity fractionating still which we use for producing vodka can be throttled back to allow some of the flavoursome substance to distil over.