French colonizers of Saint-Domingue in the 17th Century used pure fresh sugarcane juice to produce a raw spirit, known as tafia which in addition to being traded and consumed by locals, was used in vodou or voodoo ceremonies. In 1804, following the Haitian Revolution, the world's first and only successful slave revolt led by Toussaint Louverture, Haiti became an independent republic. While the revolution resulted in the destruction of many large colonial sugar estates, small-scale local production and distillation of a spirit they call Clairin in Haiti that survived and flourished over time.

Clairin is much more than a traditional, unrefined spirit or local moonshine produced by more than five hundred small distilleries or gildives across Haiti; it holds deep cultural and spiritual significance. Because of its highly traditional production process and distillation in rustic pot stills, it is often identified as a distinct category of white rum. During a visit to Haiti in 2012, Luca Gargano of Habitation Velier became acquainted with several producers of Clairin and had the idea to develop an international market for the spirit. He did so by creating The Spirit of Haiti, a company based in Port-Au-Prince to bottle Clairin and distribute it worldwide. They have since partnered with several Clairin known producers like Michel Sajous of Distillery Chelo, Fritz Vaval of Distillery Arawaks and Faubert Casimir of Distillery Faubert Casimir, Bethel Romelus and Stephan Kalil Saoud and released single-vintage expressions as well as a handful of blends.

Sajous, plants numerous species of cane on his land near the city of Saint Michel de l’Attalaye, mainly the strain called Cristalline. Sugarcane is cut by hand and pressed to extract its juice which is then reduced slightly over burning cane fibres or bagasse. The concentrated liquid is then left to spontaneously ferment in the open air for about ten days. The resulting liquid is then distilled in pot stills and bottled unfiltered without and additives or aging at around 110˚ proof. This is different from the style used by Vaval at Arrawaks distillery in Cavaillon near Haiti’s south coast. Vaval grows Madam Meuze cane on about fifty acres, ferments only raw cane juice and distills using a short column still with a homemade condenser.

Every gildive that produce Clairin in Haiti possesses a unique characteristic imparted by its specific geographic origin. Their equipment varies from one to the next, but none will furnished with modern machinery. While rum production in other Caribbean nations has generally become more efficient and industrialized, Clairin production methods have stayed the same for decades, maybe centuries. It’s precisely this lack of innovation that has made Clairin such a distinctive and interesting spirit.

In 2015, Gargano imported casks from Hampden Estes in Jamaica and the defunct Caroni Distillery in Trinidad to mature Clairin in casks from these distilleries. Bottling of aged Clairin is not available at present, but its inception marks the creation of a new spirit which future potential could transform a local product into a global commodity. However, New ventures have not yet changed the fundamentals of farming, fermentation and distillation practiced in local gildives, and for now Clairin remains what it always used to be. Because of its highly traditional production process, Clairin is often identified as a distinct category of white rum. As stated by Gargano in an interview with Tristan Stephenson, the The Curious Bartender, when it comes to the production of Clairin, the farmer is the producer and the owner and the purpose of Habitation Velier in bringing it to world markets is to elevate the product and the island and not to alter in any way the tradition behind it.

Berling S.A.

Originally establsihed as the Jane Barbancourt Co. in 1870 when Labbé Barbancourt split from his brother Dupré who then founded Rhum Barbancourt and Labbé founded Jane Barbancourt Co., affectionately named after his granddaughter who later ran the company in the early part of the 20th Century. Legal battles between the two regarding the use of the Barbancourt name resulted in Jane Barbancourt Co. having to change its name in 1950 to The Distillers Family Co. Jane married German immigrant Rudolf Linge who arrived in Haiti during WWII and had at least one son named Herbert Barbancourt Linge Sr. In 1987 Herbert changed the name of the company to Barlin Co., a contraction of Barbancourt and Linge, name that was again changed in 1999 to Berling S.A. The company’s flagship product is Vieux Labbé Premium Rum and in 2013 partnered with La Maison & Velier and La Maison du Whisky to bottle and distribute private labels like the clairin line by Spirit of Haiti introduced in Europe and most recently the Spiced Rum Boukman for the the US market. 

Distillerie de Port-au-Prince

Distillerie Port-au-Prince is a micro distillery established in 2018 as a collaboration between Berling S.A. and Italian independent bottler Luca Gargano using a copper still designed and built by Müller Pot Stills based in Germany and the distillation unit designed and engineered by master distiller Vittorio Gianni Capovilla. It is an artisanal producer of premium rhum agricole under the Providence brand. The distillery is knowned for using organic, pesticide-free Cristalline sugarcane and traditional pot stills to create unaged and cask-matured rums. Its product is substantially different from the local clairin made in the villages of Haiti for local consumption. Master distillers Herbert Barbancourt-Linge Jr. and Gianni Capovilla oversee production of the distillery’s first releases which have been said to show some Clairin-like qualities that hint interesting things to come from this new venture.

It uses cane sugarcane juice and cane syrup sourced from Michel Sajous, fermented between ten to twelve days using a proprietary teast strain and dunder from previous distillations. Both distillates from the juice and the syrup are blended and redistilled to produce the final product. .

Société du Rhum Barbancourt

The Rhum Barbancourt brand has defined Haiti’s industrial rum making for over a century and today the oldest continuously operating business in Haiti. Société du Rhum Barbancourt was established in 1862 by brothers Dupré Barbancourt ( -1907) and Labbé Barbancourt, born in Las Caues, Haiti to parents from the Charente region in France. In 1906 Labbé left the company to establish a separate company he named Jane Barbancourt Co., now known as Berling S.A. Dupré Barbancourt applied the traditional Charente double-distillation method typically reserved for Cognac to Haitian sugarcane juice, though not considered rhum agricole. The distilled spirit is then aged in imported French Limousin oak barrels in cellars in the Plaine du Cul-de-Sac region near Port-au-Prince.

When Dupré died in 1907 the company was inherited by his widow Nathalie Gardère (1846- ) later passing the company to her nephew Paul Gardère ( -1946). Upon his death, Paul’s son Jean Gardère ( -1990) took over the business in 1946 and under his leadership in 1949 he modernized the infrastructure and moved production near the very heart of the estate's sugarcane plantations where the following year distillation began at Domaine de l’Etoile, just four kilometers from Port-au-prince. The development of the company was furthered by Jean until his death in 1990 when his son Thierry Gardère ( -2017) took over the business which he ran for twenty seven years until his death. After the unexpected death of Thierry Gardère in March 2017 and purchasing her family’s 66.3% shares in 2020 after a long legal family battle, today the company is run by Thierry’s daughter, majority owner and CEO Delphine Gardère (1984- ), fifth generation member and only the second woman to head the family business.

Delphine was raised in Haiti and attended college in France where she received a degree in business at the INSEEC Grande Ecole Paris. She later attended Emory University in Atlanta and after graduating worked in finance and investment as a stock analyst in London. She then pursued a master’s degree in marketing from the Cranfield School of Management in the UK, writing her thesis on the premiumization of rum, before working as a marketer in the fragrance industry. In 2016, when she realized that her passion was in consumer products and her heart in her family business, she returned to Haiti to work in developing the expansion of distribution and export growth for Rhum Barbancourt.

Today the sugarcane juice used in the distillery is supplied by a large number of farmers, with only about 10% harvested at the company’s land. Aging is done mostly in French oak casks and some ex-bourbon casks at the company’s eleven on-site warehouses.