Although Guadeloupe is normally referred as an island, it is indeed a group of six inhabited islands: Basse-Terre, Grande-Terre, Marie-Galante, La Désirade and two within the Îles des Saintes (Terre-de-Haut and Terre-de-Bas). The largest three islands are Basse-Terre, home to La Grande Soufrière followed by Grand-Terre which is separated from Basse-Terre by a narrow channel called the Rivière Salée and though smaller than Basse-Terre more populated, and Marie-Galante, the smaller of the three just about ten miles in diameter fifteen miles southeast of Grande-Terre and twenty five miles from Dominica. All three islands produce rum which in 2015 received a protected geographical indication (PGI) that aims not only to guarantee their geographical origin, but also their quality, reputation or any other feature that can be associated with Guadeloupean production which totals roughly eight million liters of pure alcohol annually.

While both the French Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique are better known for their production of rhum agricole, the production of molasses based rhum industrielle in Guadeloupe is substantial. Guadeloupe’s two largest distilleries (Damoiseau and Bonne-Mère) produce molasses based rum or rum traditionnel. Combined, they produce a little over half of all the rum produced in Guadeloupe. However, the island does not produce a well known molasses based rum internationally since most of it is either for local consumption or sold in bulk internationally. When it comes to rhum agricole, three distilleries (Damoiseau, Bonne-Mère and Longetaeau) produce about two-thirds of total production.

There is great confusion regarding origin of the Poisson distillery, one of the eleven active distilleries in operation in the three major islands. In the website Marie Galante Land of Histories, the first mention of a Poisson distillery is in 1769 when referring to the nineteen of the twenty existing sugar plantations that continued to exist then. It clearly states that what was then he Poisson plantation did not evolve into what today is the poisson distillery. It states:

“Then along the coastal plain of Grand Bourg, seven sugar mills: Selorge (opposite the current Grande Anse factory), Comette (currently Ballet Ouest), Faussecave (Trianon), Martineau (future Poisson distillery), Bonneval, Lamure (Beaurenon), Poisson (actually the future Murat and not the current distillery, Dumoulier's daughter having married Jacques Poisson)”.

What was originally the Habitation Poisson and would later become the Habitation Murat, started around 1660 as the when a sugar factory was established by Antoine Luce, a notary from the Champagne region who arrived in Marie-Galante in 1657.  It did not survive the Dutch raid of 1676 and the English landings of the late 17th century. In 1720 the sugar factory was restarted by Joseph Dumoulier de Labrosse.  On November 28, 1747 one of Joseph Dumoulier de Labrose daughters, Marie Élisabeth Dumoulier, married Jacques Michel Poisson, a militia major and cavalry officer.  They lived at the estate, which was then named Habitation Poisson. In 1807, Marie Élisabeth then a widow, sold the estate to Dominique Murat (1742- ), a sailor from Aquitaine who left Capbreton (Landes) and deserted the ship taking him to Martinique arriving in Marie-Galante in 1776. When he purchased the estate, Dominique changed its name to Habitation Bellevue.  It was renamed Habitation Murat in 1819 when Dominique’s son, Dominique Emmanuel Murat, purchased the neighboring Laplaine plantation and merged it into Bellevue.  It was Dominique Emmanuel’s wife Jeanne Laballe, who designed the château Murat today the home of the Marie Galante Ecomuseum

Bellevvue Au Moule (Damoiseau)

In 1942, Louis Joseph Roger Damoiseau (1901-1968), descendant of a French family from Chartres and a former engineering graduate of the Institut Electrotechnique de Grenoble and the Institut Catholique d’Arts et Métiers, was the director of the Beauport sugar factory in Port-Louis when one day he heard that the old one hundred forty three acre Bellevue estate and distillery in the Le Moule commune in Grande-Terre was up for sale. The Bellevue estate was founded at the end of the 19th century and at the time was owned by the Rimbaud family of Martinique whose better known member was Louis Emmanuel Rimbaud. In the 1920s, the estate had ceased to produce sugar and rum and had been since a disused factory with nature taking over inside its buildings. After optioning the property sight unseen, an offer to purchase for twice his bid motivated it was a good opportunity so he eventually closed on the purchase.

In the early days after Damoiseau acquired the property, the main activity was always growing and processing sugarcane into agricole distillates. Bananas were also grown at the estate and sweets and jams were produced in order to survive, but eventually these activities were dropped to concentrate on rhum agricole. Little by little production at the distillery increased and Roger and his son Roger Jr., who had joined in the administration, decided to change local rum distribution practices by eliminating the wholesaler and offering their rum directly to consumers under the Damoiseau Rum brand.

It took them some forty years to build the company to be the leading distillery in Guadeloupe. The 1980s marked the beginning of a time of prosperity for the Damoiseau brand and in 1994, the abolition of local quotas allowed the company to increase sales when Damoiseau Export was established to promote their products in mainland France. They modernized the equipment which today includes two seventeen and twenty four plate column stills built by Speichim and Iméca, and a newer third one built by Honoré SAS. Since 1996 the company has been under the leadership of Hervé Damoiseau, grandson of Louis Joseph Roger Damoiseau, who has made the company today the leading producer of rum in Guadeloupe releasing 80˚ proof and 110˚ proof rums along with VSOP and XO rhum vieux expressions under the Damoiseau brand.

In 2005 Damoiseau Export entered into as partnership with Groupe Bernard Hayot of Martinique to create Spiridom, and now Damoiseau rums are amongst the most distributed in France and are sold in over forty countries. Although it appears that in 2013 Damoiseau rum was imported in the US by Spiribam, also a Groupe Bernard Hayot company, Spiribam’s website today (2026) does not list any Damoiseau products in their offerings.

Societé Industrielle de Sucreries (Bonne-Mère)

The Bonne-Mère Distillery located in Sainte-Rose, Guadeloupe, is nestled in a natural setting between the mountains of North Basse-Terre, the Grande Rivière à Goyave and the Grand Cul-de-Sac Marin, at the foot of the tropical forest. Its roots go back to 1863 when a sugar and rum production unit was inaugurated and the facility transitioned entirely to distilling rum. A century later, in 1973, the operation was reorganized to focus exclusively on the production of traditional rums and spirits. In 1995 it was incorporated under its current corporate entity Société Industrielle de Sucrerie (SIS) and in 1998 it was integrated into the La Martiniquaise Group which also owns Bellevue Distillerie in Marie-Galante. Until 2024, production at the distillery was dedicated exclusively to wholesale distribution, that year, the DBM brand was registered and their own rums were launched to market. Today, the Bonne-Mère distillery is one of the largest traditional rum distilleries in the Caribbean.

Distillerie Longueteau (Espérance)

In 1895, the failing sugar factory known as the Espérance estate in the Domaine du Marquisat de Sainte-Marie in Basse-Terre, was acquired by Henri Louis Philippe Longueteau (1853-1928) who then realized that distilling pure sugarcane juice and producing rhum agricole was far more profitable than producing sugar. According to the Guadeloupe Islands web page, the brand represents the oldest family of farmer-distillers in the world still operating consecutively across four generations and the only distillery in Guadeloupe that produces all its own sugarcane on approximately one hundred seventy three acres they cultivate. Upon his death in 1927, his son Henri Adolphe Emmanuel Longueteau (1892-1987), who In 1935also owned the Mon Repos estate which he closed down in 1962, took over the business and modernized the production equipment in 1968 when he installed steam powered machinery. Then came Paul Henri Longueteau (1926-2008), who pioneered exporting the Longueteau rum to mainland France, joined the management of the distillery in the late 1950s but it was not until 1988 after the death of his father that he became the owner of the distillery.

The family ownership of Distillerie Longueteau is now in its fourth generations, currently owned by Henri Louis Philippe Longueteau’s great-grandson François Longueteau who took the helm in 2005. François’s sons François and Nicolas who joined in the management of the business in 2011 and 2014 respectively, today oversee the marketing and commercial aspects and the fermentation phases of the estate respectively. They use a Savalle single column still to produce their two brands of rhum agricole: Longueteau and Papillon. All the aging is done onsite in French oak casks .

Distillerie Montebello

In 1930, Auguste Clément Dolomie established the Carrère Distillerie in Petit-Bourg, Basse-Terre. In 1966 only capable of grinding one ton of sugarcane per hour, Jean Marsolle whose brother owned at the time Domain de Sèverin and who for a few years had been running the small Rose distillerie in the town of Goyave, decided to buy Carrère. In 1974, his son Alain Marsolle (1944- ) took over as manager of the company, which by then had grown considerably with a renovated mill that enabled grinding capacity to increase to fourteen tons per hour. In 1982 Alain and his brother Emmanuel incorporated the business as SARL Montebello and the name of the estate was changed to Montebello. Together, the brothers developed the company in a spectacular way, but by 1982 Emmanuel had left and Alain was alone as the head of the company. Alain modernized the distillery´s equipment in order to diversify production with new products, purchased oak barrels in the US to age rum in a new cellar and prospected international markets. In 2012, at the age of sixty eight, Alain handed over management of the business to his sons Dominique who assumed the responsibilities as the technical director of the distillery and Grégory who became the general manager.

Distillerie Montebello still runs its sugar mill with steam power and all the sugarcane it processes is cut by hand. Its rum is distilled in either a Savalle column still or in a second still built by SOFAC in France. They rest the rum in metal tanks between six and twenty four months, before aging it in ex-bourbon casks, some of which are exposed directly to the sunlight, a method not commonly used in rum making in all of the Caribbean.

Maison Bologne

The Bologne distillery is located in Basse-Terre on a three-century old sugarcane plantation that stretches from the slopes of the Soufrière volcano to the shores of the Caribbean Sea. Remnants of the old sugar factory can still be found there, including the main house dating from the 1930s, the irrigation canal, the scoop wheel and the cane mill. It is today the oldest operating distillery on the island.

The history of the Bologne distillery in Basse-Terre dates back to 1654 when a Dutchman with last name Vanneybergen or Vanneybergue adapted to French, arrived from Brazil. After his death, his widow married Pitre Bologne after whom the estate is named. It was acquired in 1764 by Jean-Baptiste Dupuy-Desillets ( -ca.1783), who added it to his estate which extended across the entire Bellevue Mountain, the area on the heights of Pointe-Noire in Basse-Terre. On March 31, 1784, his widow leased it to Jacob Lesueur, and three years later in 1787 sold it to Gabriel Elein Lesueur (1739- ). During the French Revolution, the Lesueur family remained on the property, when Gabriel died, the estate was inherited by his widow, Marie Thérèse Marsolle, and their three children: Gabriel, Jean-Baptiste François, and Nicolas Lesueur. Under their ownership the plantation fell into turmoil, as it was rented to various tenants who did not manage it properly, forcing Marie Thérèse to take back control. In 1804 after the death of Marie Thérèse, Nicolas took charge of managing the plantation and proceeded to sell several parcels of land to meet obligations. When he died in 1819, his brother Jean-Baptiste François succeeded him. He compensated the widow of his other brother, Marie-Christine Brie, and sold the sugar plantation four years later to Gaëtan Valeau Jr., his son-in-law. Gaëtan’s main and lucrative activity was trade, so he was eager to sell the sugar plantation. It was then that Jean-Antoine Amé-Noël appeared, having increased his fortune thanks to his coffee plantations in Bouillante. He desired though to diversify so becoming a sugar plantation owner appealed to him. On May 26, 1830 Jean-Antoine Amé-Noël (1769-1845), a notable figuer because he was the son of a freed man of color, bought the approximate two hundred eighty acre plantation for 800,000 colonial pounds.

Amé-Noël and his wife had no children, so when she died her sister Lucile Marie, wife of François Félix, a landowner in Bouillante, became the heir to half of the property of which Amé-Noël retained the usufruct. After his death the Bologne estate was inherited by his nephew François-Joseph Amé-Noël. In 1864 François-Joseph Amé-Noël and his wife, Marie-Louise Hamel, borrowed 75,000 francs from the Crédit Foncier Colonial, in 1874 the Crédit Foncier Colonial foreclosed on the estate and requested the sale of the property at auction in order to recover its debt. On February 23, 1875 the Bologne estate was awarded to Emile Le Dentu who in 1873 under the Le Dentu & Co. had purchased about ten acres from François-Joseph to establish the the Basse-Terre Factory, a sugar factory of which Emile Le Dentu was its manager.

In 1887, the estate was transformed into a distillery, marking the beginning of agricultural rum production under the Bologne name, however, it struggled to become profitable. In 1932 the estate was acquired by Louis Sargenton-Callard who successfully propelled the business into the rum market by focusing on agricultural rum production. For four generations, the Sargenton-Callard family has worked to preserve and celebrate the Bologne brand. Its Rhum Bologne brand is the only rum producer in Guadeloupe to use exclusively black cane, a rare and demanding variety cultivated solely on this estate. Distilling is made on two modern sixteen copper plate stills made by Inox and a third still, an 18th Century Savalle built creole column still with twenty two copper plates installed in 1965.

Habitation Bellevue

Habitation Bellevue in Marie-Galante was established in the late 17th Century as a coffee plantation, but by the early 19th Century it had changed to a sugar plantation as evidenced by its windmill which was built in 1821. In 1845 it was absorbed by the Compagnie des Antilles when it established the Bellevue central factory, in Port Louis. Its molasses based distillery dates back to 1910 and records show that by 1923 it had the third largest production quota of all the thirteen producers then established on the island. In 1924 it was acquired by the Godefroy family, which lineages goes back to the Godefroy family of northern France in 1924, who after suffering the damage caused by the 1928 Okeechobee Huricane that destroyed the distillery, rebuilt it with modern equipment including a creole column still making it by 1940 the largest distillery on the island.

It is still today the largest rhum agricole distillery on the island and the second largest in Guadeloupe and the only rhum agricole distillery in Guadeloupe that is not family owned. In 2001, the Godefroy family sold an 88% majority interest to Bardinet, a subsidiary of Compagnie Financière Européenne de Prises de Participation (COFEPP). COFEPP was founded in 1957 is a major French alcoholic beverages multinational holding company headquartered in Charenton-le-Pont, second only to Pernod Ricard in terms of its size. The company's subsidiaries include La Martinquaise, Slaur Sardet and Marie Brizzard Wine & Spirits. La Martinique also owns Societé Industrielle de Sucreries de Bonne Mère, SA Sucreries et Rhumeries de Marie-Galante and Depaz and Saint James in Martinique.

Habitation Bellevue crushes approximately twelve thousand tons of sugarcane annually with only about 25% grown on its own land. After the distillate is aged on premises in ex-bourbon and French oak casks, most of its production is exported to France. Its current manager is Hubert Damoiseau, nephew of its former owner Albert Godefroy and cousin of Herve Damoiseau of Bellevue Au Moule.

Bellevue Sinte-Rose (Reimonenq)

This distillery, located in the commune of Saint-Rose in Basse-Terre, is better known as Distillerie Reimonenq after the name of its founders Joseph and Fernand Reimonenq ( -1959), who purchased the then existing facilities in 1916 together with André Bon, their partner at the time. Upon the death of Fernand in 1959, management of the distillery was assumed his son Leopold Reimonenq (1933- ) and today the distillery is under the leadership of a third generation Remonenq consiting of Leopold’s sons. The distillery began to market rum in 1965 under the name "Grand Corsaire".

Operations have not been without reconstruction needed after a fire in 1969 and the devastation caused by Hurricane Hugo in 1989. Both times, the distillery was rebuilt and modernized for better productivity. The Reimonenq distillery is one of a kind., its double column alembic invented by Leopold Reimonenq and built by Parfait Remonenq is unique in the West Indies. The fermented sugarcane juice is indirectly heated by means of an exchanger coil to separate the alcohol from the pure fermented cane juice, this exchanger makes it possible to control the temperatures during the distillation and to eliminate any bad tastes. They cultivate about ⅓ of the sugarcane they process in about fifty acres surrounding the distillery and buy about ⅔ from cane growers in northern Basse-Terre.

Père Labat-Domain Poisson SAS

Popular lore states that the origin of the Poisson distillery begins in 1863 when the Poisson family acquired a sugar plantation and sugar factory in Grand-Bourg on the island of Marie Galante.  As the story goes it is named after its one time owner Catherine Poisson, based on the  information that follows obtained from the Marie Galante Land of History(ies) website, any reference to Catherine Poisson refers to the sister of royal judge Jean poisson and wife of David Lhost de Selorge.  However, the information below does not document in any way the establishment of the Poisson distillery in 1860 or 1863. 

The origin of the Poisson family in Marie Galante dates back to 1673 when Dominique Lhoste de Selorge, lieutenant general for civil and criminal matters at the Présidial Court of Montargis, married Geneviève de Boisseret in Paris, daughter of Jean de Boisseret and Madeleine Houel, Marquise de Sainte Marie.  In 1720, their second son, David Lhoste Marquis de Selorge ( -1836), a cavalry captain originally from Montargis, would settle in Marie Galante where he married Catherine Poisson (1702-1765) and became the owner of the Grand Anse plantation.  Catherine was a Marie Galante native and sister of royal judge Jean Poisson (1676-1751), former clerk of the Superior Council of Martinique.  In 1730 David Lhoste revived the old Thauvet sugar plantation at Grande Anse so he owned more than one plantation. However, therein it also states that in 1734 the parish of Basse-Terre was home to the majority of the gentry, among them: David Lhoste, who lived with his wife Catherine Poisson, their two sons (one of whom is a soldier), and their six daughters (one of whom is of marriageable age). They owned two rifles, four pistols, and four swords, one thousand banana trees, a plot of yams, and twenty thousand cassava pits.  For his sugar plantation, he has an animal powered mill and thirty seven slaves, one of whom is declared a runaway.

On September 10, 1748 Anne Catherine Pasquier de Varennes (1729-1773), nineteen years old, married Jean Jacques Lhoste, Marquis de Selorge (1723-1777), in the Church of Our Lady of the Conception.  Jean Jacques was the son of David Lhose and Catherine Poisson. In 1769 it is evident that what would be the Poisson distillery was still Habitation Martineau when, referring to the plantations still in existence that year it is stated that:

“Then along the coastal plain of Grand Bourg, seven sugar mills; Selorge (opposite the current Grande Anse factory), Comette (currently Ballet Ouest), Faussecave (Trianon), Martineau (future Poisson distillery), Bonneval, Lamure (Beaurenon), Poisson (actually the future Murat and not the current distillery, Dumoulier's daughter having married Jacques Poisson).”

In 1773 Jean Jacques Lhoste (1749- ), the son of Jean Jacques Lhoste, marquis de Selorge and Anne Catherine Pasquier de Varennes and grandson of Catherine Poisson, married Marie Catherine Poisson Bontemps (1759?-1792). Since Catherine Poisson died in 1765 and her son Jean Jacques in 1777, it was reasonable to belive it was her grandson who acquired the Martineau estate in 1860 and gave it his grandmother’s family name which stuck with the land to eventually become the Distillerie Poisson.

The better known history of Distillerie Poisson begins in 1916 when Édouard Rameaux (1872- ), member of a land owning family whose roots in Marie-Galante date back to the late 1700s, purchased the Poisson estate, kept the name and added a distillery using the same sophisticated column still distillation process historically used for Cognac and registered the Père Labat rum brand. A copper pot still from Barbados was installed in 1934, which was replaced in 1955 with one of the first creole column stills. This was followed by another creole column still in the late 70s, modeled after the first, both have remained in operation to this day. Édouard also owned the nearby Saint Christophe distillery which produced molasses rum, so it appears that in an effort to diversify, he switched to processing sugarcane juice and producing rhum agricole at Distillerie Poisson. In 1976, management of the Poisson distillery was handed down to Édouard Rameaux’s grandson Ernest Renault who is also the uncle of Dominique Thierry, the owner of the Bielle distillery.

In 2007 Père Labat-Domain Poisson SAS was established by local businessmen Jean-Cedric Brot who is its CEO and Domain Séverin (no longer distilling) owner José Pirbakas who is its Managing Director, as a minority stakeholder. The small distillery produces approximately thirty three thousand cases of one liter bottles of rum each year, including three agricultural rums: one at 40% ABV, one at 50% ABV and another at 59% ABV, unlike other Guadeloupe rums which are generally 50% or 55% ABV. They produce the Père Labat brand rhum agricole, named in honor of the Dominican missionary priest Jean-Baptiste Labat (1663-1738) who managed the Fonds Saint-Jacques plantation in Sainte-Marie from 1696 and brought two copper stills from France to distill sugarcane alcohol.

Père Labat's relatively small rhum production is made using fresh cane juice which, after fermentation, is distilled in a Coffey column still. It meets the criteria required to be called Rhum Agricole de Guadeloupe. Only a small fraction of this rhum is aged, generally in ex-bourbon barrels, making it quite rare and relatively expensive. Since 2020 they have also been producing the Rhum Rhum brand, the world's only rum to be produced from pure fresh undiluted sugarcane juice, unlike other agricultural rums where the sugarcane juice is diluted with water to lower the sugar content and complete the fermentation process. Rhum Rhum is a partnership with Gianni Capovilla and Luca Gargano that previously operated at Bielle.

Today, the Poisson Distillery remains a well known producer of traditional rhum agricole, one of the few remaining family-owned, independent distilleries in the French Antilles.

Societe D'exploitation de la Distillerie Bielle (SEDB)

The origin of this estate, located on Marie-Galante, dates back to 1769 when it was a coffee plantation owned by Jean-Pierre Bielle ( -1812) and his wife Valentien Lacave. Since 1955 it has been under the ownership and management of the Rameaux family who also own Distillerie Poisson, today under the leadership of Dominique Thiery, nephew of Ernest Renault the current head at Distillery Poisson.

he time line on the Rhum Bielle website states that in 1812 upon the death of Jean-Pierre, the property was taken over by his eldest son Nicolas Bielle ( -1847) who in 1826 partnered with his brother Maximilien to establish a sugar factory. The death of Nicolas resulted in complex inheritance proceedings that culminated with the estate being awarded at auction to Espanet and Co. on August 26, 1857. In 1868, Espanet and Co. was dissolved and the heirs acquired the entire property, which then comprised an estate of some one hundred twenty eight acres and a sugar factory. In 1882, Ernest Bourjac took possession of the property in compensation for debts owed by Fernand Espanet. In 1955, when it appears the distillery had not been in operation for a few years, the estate including the sugar factory and the distillery were acquired by Paul Rameaux. In 1975 the Société d'Exploitation de la Distillerie Bielle, whose current president is Paul's great-nephew Dominique Thiery, was established to take over ownership and management of the estate including the sugar factory and the distillery.

Distillery operations at Bielle at carried out using three column stills built by Alambic SOFAC in France. Aging is done on site in ex-bourbon and French oak casks. Bielle is unique in the way it transports its white rum to France, in not larger than fifty five liter oak barrels aboard wind-powered sailing cargo ships that take several weeks to complete the transatlantic. The constant motion of the waves, the salt air and fluctuating temperatures accelerate the interaction between the wood and the spirit. This process, known as dynamic aging, imparts a highly complex flavor profile. They started these voyages in 2015 when they purchased the schooner Bielle Marie-Galante, however, on a voyage in 2020 the Bielle Marie-Galante, transporting sixty two casks of rum, ran aground and although the cargo was lost no one on board was harmed. Today they continue the practice aboard schooners operated by partners like Fairtransport.

In 2006 Gianni Capovilla and Luca Gargano partnered with Bielle to establish a small distillery to produce the Rhum Rhum brand. However, this arrangement lasted until 2020 when production of Rhum Rhum moved to Distillerie Poisson. Currently, Bielle owns fifty five acres approximately one hundred thirty six acres of land around the distillery they for catell ranching and to grow sugarcane and other agricultural products. They process for their own use about 6% of the one hundred thousand tonnes of sugarcane grown annually by some one thousand three hundred growers on Marie-Galante most of which sugarcane is processed at the Grand-Anse sugar refinery

Papa Rouyo

The name Papa Rouyo refers to Charles Albert Ruscade (1900-1980) the son of farmers from Le Moule who for most of hi life worked the family sugarcane fields in Portland. The Papa Rouyo Distillery in Basse-Terre, was established in 2021 as a partnership between his grandson Judes Galli, his great-grandson Joris Galli and sugar planters Tim Sybesius and Jean-Marie Gobardham.

is athe newest distillery in Guadeloupe that's quickly establishing itself among agricole fans as a producer worth watching. The descendants of Charles Albert ‘Papa Rouyo’ Ruscade – who worked the cane fields of Guadeloupe throughout his life – launched this modern distillery in 2021. Despite the mod cons, Papa Rouyo produces a deeply traditional style of rhum agricole with a palpable connection to the lands that surround it.

As the regulations in Guadeloupe differ from those in Martinique, this distillery is permitted to create cane juice rum using pot stills and retain the name rhum agricole. Bottlings of its aged spirit are relatively few at present, understandably, but Papa Rouyo Jenerasyon 3 Year Old gives a clear indication of where this distillery is heading. Matured in new French oak and ex-Cognac barrels, it shows a weighty spirit character (likely thanks to those pot stills) with a complex nose of aromatic spices, liquorice and woody herbs before a rich palate of caramelized sugarcane.

Rhumerie Karukera

This is a non-distilling producer established in 2005 located in Capesterre-Belle-Eau, to produce aged rhum agricole under the Karukera brand. It is the creation of Grégoire Hayot who was previously employed at Damoisseau, when he partnered with François Longetaeau of the Longeteau distillery adjacent to which it is located in order to resurrect the Karukera brand that was in existence in the 1970s. Although originally Hayot purchased neutral spirits from Longetaeau, around 2020 he started purchasing from other local distilleries. They rest their rum in stainless steel vats for several months before aging them in a mix of new and ex-cognac, ex-sherry, and ex-sauternes casks.