Rhum Père Labat is distilled on the island of Marie-Galante, part of Guadeloupe. The distillery, aging facilities, and the estate's sugarcane fields sit on 1300+ acres.

Producing rum since the early 1900s, Père Labat utilizes estate and locally grown sugarcane varieties native to the island. As rhum agricole, these spirits are produced from fresh-pressed sugarcane juice rather than molasses. The distillery is the oldest on the island of Marie-Galante and houses one of of the oldest stills in the Caribbean.

RHUM AGRICOLE

• French for agricultural rum , produced from fresh cane juice rather than molasses

• Generally associated with French overseas territories and distilled on the French West Indies islands of Martinique, Guadeloupe, Grande-Terre, and Basse-Terre. Rum made from cane juice is also produced in Haiti, Brazil, Cape Verde, and throughout Central and South America where it goes by a variety of regional names.

• Different French production regions have either an AOC or GIs – appellations of origin or geographical indicators – which are legal certifications designating that producers are adhering to specific standards and practices. Rum can also be produced using other standards practices, but that product cannot bear the mark of a specific designation.

AOC : Martinique Rhum Agricole

GI : Rhum de la Guadeloupe, Rhum de la Réunion, Rhum de la Baie du Galion, Rhum des Antilles françaises, Rhum des départements français d’outre-mer, Rhum de la Guyane

• Locally, it is primarily consumed unaged or blanc, but can also be aged after which it is known as élevé sous bois or vieux.

• 25 distilleries in the French West Indies produce rhum agricole, 9 of which are in Guadeloupe – 6 on the main island, 3 on Marie-Galante.

MARIE-GALANTE + DISTILLERIE POISSON

• Located a 1 hour boat ride from the mainland of Guadeloupe, Marie-Galante is just under 66 square miles of mainly limestone plateaus and some rich volcanic soil. About 20% of the island’s area is devoted to growing sugarcane.

• There are five operating distilleries on Marie-Galante, four of which produce rhum agricole: Distillerie Poisson, Rhum Rhum, Distillerie Bielle, and Distillerie Bellevue.

• Distillerie Poisson was established in the 1860s to supply cane to a nearby sugar refinery,and rhum agricole production began in 1916.

• In 2007 the distillery was purchased by Jean-Cedric Brot, a Guadeloupe native whose family history goes back generations on the island.

• As Marie-Galante is a French territory, the distillery and its workers are governed and protected by the rules and regulations that apply to les filières canne, sucre et rhum – the cane, sugar, and rum sector.

• All workers are employed full time, paid regulated wages, and given yearly raises as well as meal and travel vouchers. There is mandated salary equality between men and women performing the same job, paid days off, and retirement compensation based on how long a worker has been employed.

RHUM PÈRE LABAT

• Rhum Père Labat is the brand of rum produced at Distillerie Poisson.

• 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.

• Four kinds of cane are used: red, white, blue, and gray. Some is grown on the estate, some is purchased from local growers. All cane is hand cut and brought to the distillery by ox-drawn carts.

• 72 hour fermentation yields a vin de canne at 5% abv

• Distillation takes place in one of two copper creole column stills which have 11 stripping plates and 4 rectifying/enriching plates. The spirit comes off the still between 69% and 71% abv.

• Rhum blanc is placed in open top wooden foudres for 10-15 days and demineralized water is added to bring it down to proof. On the island, the “local proof” is 59%.

• Rhum vieux is aged for at least 6 years in ex-bourbon casks.

Interested in a Père Labat single barrel? Click below and we can get you details.

A message from Nicolas Palazzi

In mid-2019, my friend Florent reached out to put me in touch with a French gentleman who was making rhum agricole called Rhum Père Labat. I didn’t know much at that point, but decided to meet the Frenchman on short notice. After all, our business is more based on people than on products (as long as the products are good, of course) and one never knows what could come out of a meeting. Some encounters really click, others not so much. This one certainly did.

Jean-Cedric Brot was a calm yet energetic, approachable, and passionate distillery owner on the tiny French island of Marie-Galante, an hour’s boat ride from Guadeloupe. A native of Guadeloupe, JC’s family has roots on Marie-Galante going back generations, and he has a deep knowledge of the Caribbean and the alcohol industry. He told me that in 2007, he realized his dream of purchasing a rhum distillery, and I immediately knew I needed to check it out.

A couple of months later I hopped on a flight. After a brief layover in Haiti, we landed in Pointe-à-Pitre – Guadeloupe’s largest city and economic capital. We had dinner that night at the small outdoor restaurant that operates right in front of the distillery, which was all I had hoped for and more.

Distillerie Poisson – named after Catherine Poisson, the estate’s 18th century owner – is small and rustic, with nearly everything done by hand without automation. The staff is made up entirely of locals, who were working hard in the heat of the October morning I spent there. They seemed happy and full of purpose. The young head distiller and quality manager, Sullivan Delord, walked me through the technical side of the production process with great enthusiasm, and he clearly knew what he was talking about.

I was familiar with the Père Labat Blanc 59% from back in France, as it’s an iconic bottle in the world of rhum agricole, but I was beyond impressed by the distillery’s full lineup. Straight or in ti’ punch, they were all stunning. Now knowing the quality of all of their rhums, the mindset with which the operation was run, and the overall ethos behind the business all matched the criteria we look for at PM Spirits, JC and I shook hands and decided to work together in the US market, with PM as their importer.

Fast-forward: COVID-19, the death of George Floyd, and general civil unrest throughout the US. It felt like the world was on fire. As a forty-something white guy in America, the furor that was generated by the murder of Mr. Floyd opened my eyes to injustices towards black and brown people that I knew existed but for some reason had not intellectualized, as I hadn’t previously been directly confronted by them. Much like I had never thought deeply about how difficult and unfair it is to be a woman in a male-dominated world prior to meeting my wife and raising two daughters, I had not grasped how difficult and unfair it is to be not white in a very white world.

What does this all have to do with rhum? Well, the entire industry is inextricably tied to the sugar industry, which – much like cotton and coffee – was straight up built on slavery until its abolition (on paper) in 1848 in France and 1865 in the US. And Rhum Père Labat, the brand produced by Distillerie Poisson since the early 1900s, was named after a man who was very well known throughout the Caribbean. I hadn’t processed, however, that Père Labat was a slave owner.

So here we are are: we have a rhum agricole distillery widely known as one of the true gems of the French West Indies, owned by a local man with a staff that is made up entirely of local people of color, all of whom are protected by the French government’s very strict rules of employment – free healthcare, regulated salaries, mandatory breaks and vacation time, etc. And this distillery has a hugely positive impact on the local economy.

The current owner and his family are well aware of all of this. Jean-Cedric shared some of his family history with me, mentioning his great-great-great-grandmother whose grave was found by the family. It bore one name, Mathilde, and noted that she passed away in 1847. The absence of a last name on a gravestone in that area is generally a sign of that person having been enslaved.

Nothing more needs to be said about the quality of the rhum – the stuff is stunning. But the name of the brand that has been in place for 100+ years has a different feeling to me as of the past few months.

PM deeply cares about this rhum and this distillery. These are good people making fantastic products. The dude named Père Labat was horrible.

That’s pretty much the extent of our thought process today, and I wanted to share it with you.

-Nicolas Palazzi

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