St. Lucia was discovered by Christopher Columbus on his fourth voyage in 1502, traditionally celebrated on December 13, 1502, which is Saint Lucy's Day. The first attempts at colonization were made by the English in 1605 and 1638, but sickness and hostility of the native Caribs Indians prevented its success. For the next two centuries it was at times claimed for England and France until it was finally ceded to Britain in 1814 by the Treaty of Paris, after which it became a crown colony. Between 1838 and 1885, it was administered by the governor of Barbados. In 1958 St. Lucia joined the West Indies Federation, although its colonial status remained unchanged. Under its 1960 constitution, St. Lucia became an autonomous unit within the federation, achieving a greater degree of internal self-government. After the federation was dissolved on May 31, 1962, the West Indies Act of 1967 gave St. Lucia a status of association with the United Kingdom on March 1, 1967. Independence was finally achieved on February 22, 1979, with St. Lucia remaining a parliamentary democracy within the British Commonwealth.

The French introduced large-scale sugarcane cultivation in 1764 when forests were cleared and massive estates were built in valleys such as Vieux Fort, Dennery, Roseau, and Cul de Sac. In 1874 the first large central sugar factory was established in the Cul de Sac valley, shifting the industry from small estate processing to industrial scale manufacturing.  Balenbouche Estate was established the 1740’s as one of the first sugar and rum producing plantations in St. Lucia. According to its webpage, the earliest known family name associated with Balenbouche is “Martin” in 1770. However, St. Lucia was never a large rum exporter until the second half of the 20th Century.

In the 1950s there were only two distilleries operating on the island: the Dennery Distillery and the Roseau Bay Distillery. Traditionally, sugar was the main agricultural product of St. Lucia, but in the early 1950s following the collapse of the sugar industry, that changed to bananas. The Dennery Distillery was established in the Mabouya Valley on the island's east coast in 1931 by Denis Barnard, a third-generation St. Lucian of English descent on the site of his family's sugar plantation and factory. They used molasses from the processing of sugarcane from their fields to pioneer unique rum blending and distilling techniques. The Roseau Bay Distillery, located on the opposite side of the Island due west of the Dennery Distillery, was established in 1959 by Geest Industries Ltd., a British company established in 1935 by Dutch brothers John and Leonard van Geest,that started importing bananas from the Caribbean in the early 1950s and became a major global conglomerate known for pioneering the commercial banana trade between the UK and the Caribbean.

St. Lucia Distillers

In 1972, the rise of European sugar beet forced the end of sugar production in Dennery. That year, the Dennery Distilley merged their operations with the Roseau Bay Distillery and moved from Dennery to the Roseau Valley just south of the capital City Castries to form St. Lucia Distillers where they produced the now discontinued blend of rum named Denros Bounty Rum, an acronym of the location of the two merged entities. The original Dennery Distillery is no longer operational, but the broader Mabouya Valley/La Caye region contains ruins and nature reserves. Some of the original sugar mill structures are located near the Fond d'Or Nature Reserve and Heritage Park, where remnants of the island's rich agricultural history remains still stand. Today St. Lucia Distillery is the sole rum producer is the St. Lucia.

In 1993 the Barnard family bought out the Geest shares and in 1998 sold 24.9% of the company to Trinidad based Angostura Ltd., giving St Lucia Distillery a wider regional presence and the capital to pursue the product development philosophy which has since characterized it. In 2005 Angostura Ltd. parent company CL Financial acquired the remaining shares from the Barnard family becoming 100% owners while third-generation rum-maker Laurie Barnard, grandson of Denis Barnard, stayed on as Managing Director until his death in 2012.

CL Financial ran into financial difficulties and went bankrupt during the world financial crisis that started in 2007 and was taken over by the government and central bank of Trinidad. In 2017, Spiribam , a subsidiary of the Groupe Bernard Hayot purchased St. Lucia Distillers making it a sister company to Rhum Clemént and Rhum J.M. St. Lucia Distillers produces several rum brands among which is their flagship and better known Chairman’s Reserve brand. They also produce the Bounty, Marigot Bay, Admiral Rodney and Denros Overproof brands. The majority of their rums are made from molasses sourced from the Dominican Republic and Central America. Just by the distillery they grow sugarcane on a fifteen acre tract to make small batches of sugarcane juice. Their Chairman's Reserve Legacy rum is a unique blend of rums made from both sugarcane juice and molasses, a combination rarely found in a single bottle, column and pot still distilled and aged separately in ex-Bourbon casks for five to seven years before blending.

St. Lucia Distillery has four stills, two small batch stills, a Vendome hybrid still formerly at used at Trinidad Distillers, Ltd. and two larger stills, one batch and the other a Coffey twin column continuous still.