How was the production of spirits connected to slavery?!

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Starting in the 16th century up into the 19th century, traders would take manufactured goods from Europe to Africa sell and buying slaves. They would take the slaves to the Americas and sell them there and buy cotton, sugar, rum and other items to take back to Europe. This was known as the slave triangle. Spirits are connected because selling the slaves in the Caribbean to buy Rum was one of the more profitable trades.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_sl…
http://www.nmm.ac.uk/freedom/viewTheme.c…

Because the production of spirits like wine, brandy, & rum are so very labor intensive the producers needed lots of cheap labor...and that's still pretty much par for the course in the global Agricultural realm. An example of this would be: Slaves working in the Carribean Island like Trinidad & Tobago in the cane fields. The produced molasses from sugar cane and when it was discovered that you could ferment & distill the molasses and produce Rum, then the trade was on. Add in supply + demand and you have a thriving industry. Those who can afford to finance these large scale operations do it...either ethically or non-ethically. When trade is unethical that's when the ideology of Slavery and other notions come into play. Nowadays, you find movements like Fair Trade (most often associated with the thriving global coffee bean trade) evolving & becoming (hopefully) the standard and not the exception.

I'm a personal chef. I also enjoy Culinary History.

I am not sure if this is a close enough connection, but most ships in the 18th and 19th centuries required rum, brandy or some kind of "grog" to keep the sailors pacified and to help prevent scurvy (rum especially). Slaves were brought from Africa via ships, so that might be one connection.
Of course, slaves were probably used to grow and harvest sugar cane in the Caribbean, which is what they use to make rum, so that's another possible connection.