Distiller Notes
Critical Acclaim
All VintagesFor those who like rum with a bit of sweetness to it, this honey-hued sipper offers vanilla bean and brown sugar on the nose and palate, drying to a hot cinnamon finish smoothed by decadent hints of cocoa, espresso and hazelnut.
In the late 17th century, the famous Pére Labat, the famous Jesuit priest credited with proliferating sugar cultivation in the French West Indies, was the parish priest of Macouba while he operated a sugar refinery at his house on the Roche River, where Rhum J.M comes from today. Antoine Leroux-Préville purchased Father Labat’s estate in 1790 and gave the plantation the name we know it by today, Habitation Fonds-Préville.
In 1845, Antoine Leroux-Préville’s daughters sold the property to Jean-Marie Martin, a merchant from Saint-Pierre and husband of Marie Ferment who was the daughter of one of the island’s most famous sugar planters of the day. Jean-Marie Martin recognized the superior quality of the sugarcane he found on the Fonds-Préville estate and decided to shift the cultivation practices away from producing huge quanities of sugar and to focus on growing sugarcane to create a yield of the finest quality on the island. He built a small distillery on the estate and branded his initials "J.M." on the first oak barrels used to mature his rum. Since then, these two letters have become and remain the emblem of the most prestigious and most superior rum known in Martinique.
In 1914, Gustave Crassous de Médeuil, already owner of the Maison Bellevue, purchased Habitation Fonds-Préville from his brother Ernest. From this day, Maison Bellevue and Fonds-Préville became one entity. Located at the foot of the volcano Mont Pelèe, Habitation Fonds-Préville remains to this day a family farming property, belonging to the heirs of the Crassous de Médeuil. The original passion for making the world’s finest rhum continues on today by abiding to the tradition of quality set forth by Jean-Marie Martin and the Crassous de Médeuil family.
Often referred to as a Gold Rum, an Aged Rum is one that has been aged in barrels, often Ex-Bourbon or White Oak before bottling. As the Rum continues to age, it draws more and more color and flavor from the wood, adding both body and complexity to the finished product. Aged Rums can be sipped neat or added to cocktails. They fall somewhere in between White and Dark Rums in terms of their respective strength of flavor.
