THE CARIBBEAN SPIRIT To make rum take a bit of sun shine, of high-sea-wind, all the colors of the islands and a lot of panache : you will then have a fine elixir with a taste of adventure. In each bottle, one imagines a ship dressed with flags sailing through the blue waters of the Caribbean sea. Hello colorful scarves, hello madras... And what do we find in the hold of this ship? Rum, of course. In the remote time of sailing ships, captains dressed in lace and simple sailors would find in it the comfort for their miseries and the friend for their joys. « Ho-Ho, said the song, another bottle of rum » and one would go and conquer fabulous lands and return with a ship full of treasures. At the same time when some of these pirates were gratified with honors and titles by their king, rum had also conquered several places. However, it was still unstable, rough, burnt by the sun and fights : in short, nothing but a sugar-cane alcohol. Some believe its father was a Dominican, called Labat, who came to live in Martinique at the end of the Great Century. God’s ways will stay mysterious : to one of its servants, father Lefébure, superior of the Charity Brothers’ convent and alchemist, comes the honor of offering to the world a great rum. In great secrecy, that centuries never revealed, this noble servant of God put together a hard liquor of a rare quality. The islanders foreseeing the success of this drink, became enthusiastic. So much that, father Lefébure had to build the first Saint-James distillery on the top of a beautiful hill. It was in 1765, and with the years passing by, the rum Saint-James, the oldest one in Martinique, also became the most cherished. Then that special gold of the Caribbean crossed the seas and the frontiers. Saint-Pierre city became Rome of the rum. A beautiful botanical garden then belonged to the Saint-James company. The company name could also be seen on a big board indicating to the sailors lost in the Caribbean seas, the proximity of a safe harbor. Both were destroyed along with the entire city and plantations during the eruption of the «Pelée Mountain» in 1902.   A SHINING LEGEND Some historians put the rum at the same level as two heroes of the American Civil War : LaFayette and Washington. This theory is not totally bizarre : at that time, the settlers loved to drink rum, and the king of England wanted to deprive them of it. The Boston Tea Party took place because of their love of the rum. More realistic is the fact that the noble alcohol inspired Paul Revere’s screams that warned the Bostonians just in time of the arrival of English troops. What men did with love and faith not even a volcano can destroy. Indeed, the distillery miraculously survived through this apocalypse. Two years later, sugar-cane was growing back on Saint-James lands and was regaining its popularity. Saint-James was on every lips that touched only a bit of that great rum and not far from there near Saint-Marie, they had to build a second distillery, larger, better-equipped, but where the same rum as father Lefébure’s first elixir would burst forth from the big copper alembics. THE SUGAR-CANE Sailing toward the islands, Christopher Columbus was bringing with him a fabulous gift : the sugar-cane. He was however only imitating Alexander who brought to the Middle East the sweet whichhad already been relished by the Chinese people for four thousand years. Sugar cane had almost gone all around the world when it arrived in the Caribbean. Brought back from Brazil in 1654 by 300 Flemish, onlythe secret about refining would be necessary in Martinique to immediately cover the island with sugar-cane plantations. The miraculous plant found spots to grow on, and dried hills became luxurious gardens. Very soon, Martinique’s heart would bit to another tune : the rum.