Sugar

Special White Sugar: Special sugar is a white sugar that has better specifications than white sugar strictly speaking. It can also be considered as a sugar of an inferior quality.

Refined Sugar: Known as white sugar in countries where only one kind of white sugar is used. Refined sugar is obtained by purifying, decolouring and re-crystallizing raw sugar, that is to say, dissolving raw sugar, purifying the resulting syrup and crystallizing it again in order to form the grain.

In 1515 the first trapiche is built, a press machine to extract the juices from the sugarcane. This tool will open the door to the golden age of sugar in the 11th century. Since then sugar turned into a basic element of the worlds food.

It was not until 1501 when finally the plants started growing. The success of sugarcane plantations in Santo Domingo spread its growth throughout the Caribbean and South America.

Sugar cane made its entrance into Europe with the Muslims conquests, who planted it in Sicily and in Spain. The first roots planted in the New World were introduced by Christopher Columbus in his second travel (1493) into La Espa?ola Island, but the canes did not prosper.

Belonging to the Gramineae family, the sugar cane has thick and tough stems of approximately two meters tall, long leaves and purple flowers. In the inside, the stem contains a spongy and sweet tissue from which sugar is extracted.

Sugar cane is cultivated in almost all the tropical and subtropical regions of the globe. Being one of the earliest crops on the world, it is believed that its origin dates from 3.000 years ago as a kind of grass in New Guinea Island and from there it spread to Borneo, Sumatra and India. Native tribes believed that the human race had emerged ancestrally from two sugar cane buds. 

When sugar reached the Caribbean it had already travelled throughout the world under different names. In the Tibet it was known as 'sa-kar', the Arabs called it 'accucar', the Chinese people 'Kanche' and in Venice in its crystallized form it was called 'candi.

Belonging to the Gramineae family, the sugar cane has thick and tough stems of approximately two meters tall