Martinique is world famous for its quality rum. The latter is also often used as a reference product to talk about the island. But where does rum come from? Was he born in Martinique or elsewhere?
Sugar cane arrived in the Caribbean during the conquests of Christopher Columbus, in particular his second voyage in 1493, when he landed on several islands including Guadeloupe and Dominica. At the time, it was imported from the Canary Islands. Its stems are first planted on the island of Hispaniola, current territory of the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
The purpose of this establishment was exclusively to produce sugar and this will be done in 1516 when the very first shipment of sugar will leave Santo Domingo for Spain. These first implants will also be brought to the Lesser Antilles although the Spaniards only granted interest to the islands of the Greater Antilles. Indeed, according to the writings of Father Labat, sugar cane was already present in the future French territories of the Lesser Antilles when the settlers arrived.
The French, who are also connoisseurs of brandy, decide to reserve land specially dedicated to the cultivation of sugar cane. The first goal was to manufacture sugar, but very early on, this culture encountered problems of profitability because the extraction rates did not allow optimal production of sugar from cane juice.
The juice fermented by heat and natural yeasts gives an alcoholic beverage whose oldest sources lead to Barbados in 1640. Indeed, it is in the smallest island most east of the West Indian arc, Barbados, then a British colony that the brandy made from sugar cane appears.
Concerning Martinique, the ancestor of rum is not mentioned until 1667 in the writings of Father du Tertre (1610-1687) a French clergyman and botanist. While he was a missionary in Martinique, he made a distillation device to treat scum and large syrups (term designating molasses). Father Labat perfected the distillation process with his stills (apparatus intended for the separation of products by heating and then cooling) around 1694. The sugar factories would then add a distillery and manufacture both sugar and rum.
At the time, this strongly alcoholic drink was called "kill devil" (guildive), tafia (word of African or Amerindian origin) or even rumbillion. The latter will also give the word rum in English which becomes rhum in French and will be adopted definitively at the end of the 17th century.
Also, rum was made for medicinal purposes. It was sometimes consumed in large doses by pirates, buccaneers and other adventurers. We can also remember the episode of the Dutch who wanted to conquer Martinique had failed in their attempt after having heavily consumed the guildive.
The French West Indies will quickly become the driving force behind the production of rum and sugar. At that time, it was industrial rum or sugar rum which was made from the residues of molasses. The rum distillation column will replace the still later.
Subsequently, the sugar crisis of the 19th century, will lead to a total change of course with sugar cane which will be devoted almost exclusively to the production of rum and more sugar. It was also around this period that “agricultural rum” or “habitant rum” appeared, which was obtained by distillation of pure fermented cane juice.
Today, Martinican agricultural rum, which obtained the Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée (A.O.C. in French is a quality) label in 1996, constitutes nearly 85% of total production on the island. In 2012, 85,366 hectoliters of pure alcohol (PAH) came out of the island's distilleries, 3/4 going to the French and European market and more marginally to Asia or America.
