Post #777838 by Early Landed Larry on Fri, Jul 14, 2017 3:49 PM

How do you mean, Palm Tree Pat? The rums above are all agricole except the Bacardi.

I don't know France that well and only went to the north-west region this year - but rhums from the old French colonial islands are certainly strongly represented in most regular shops! A good majority are agricoles from Martinique, Gabon, Haiti etc - brands like Clement and St James represented strongly in the sipping categories. Neisson, Trois Rivieres, HST and a bunch of other brands I've never heard of but that are all from Haiti seem to dominate the more affordable categories and most are blanc or unaged. I expect that is largely down to both the historical colonial / trade connection and the way preferences have developed over time. I don't know if that's the case all over France or just the NW. (If you don't know the story about why only the former French islands make rum directly from sugarcane I recommend looking it up!)

You do see the bigger non-agricole brands like EL12 and Don Papa etc, but that are not as common and there aren't as many on the shelves of the bottles that there are. Almost the reverse of the U.K. (I have never seen a rhum agricole in a regular liquor store, only in very specialist shops in London).

If you're saying you've never tried a rhum agricole I highly recommend it, it's great stuff - my go to is JM Gold for almost any purpose. I'm looking forward to trying this St James as the second rum in a Mai Tai as recommended by Jeff Berry, although I didn't stretch to the XO which was more than double the price. E