Barbancourt

Liquor Wine Cave lists the Rhum Barbancourt range in Australia, including the 4 Year, the 8 Year Five Star, the 15 Year, and the Cane Blossom and Volcanic Cane limited bottlings.

Barbancourt is unusual twice over. It is made from fresh pressed sugarcane juice rather than from molasses, which puts it in the same family as Martinique and Guadeloupe agricole rather than with the molasses rums of the English speaking Caribbean. And it is double distilled by the Charentais method, the same two pass process used for cognac, then aged in French Limousin oak. Very little rum anywhere is made this way.

The result sits between two worlds. It has the clean cane character of an agricole and the rounded oak of a brandy, and it is one of the easiest rums to hand to someone who normally drinks cognac.

The range reads as a straight ladder. The 4 Year, sold in other markets as Three Star, is the mixing bottle. The 8 Year, the Five Star Reserve Speciale, is where most Barbancourt drinkers settle. The 15 Year, the Estate Reserve, is the one to open neat. Cane Blossom is finished in Japanese mizunara oak, and Volcanic Cane is a fifteen year old finished in a peated Islay whisky cask. Both are limited releases.

The wider rum range and the dark rum page sort by style.

History

Dupre Barbancourt came from Charente, the cognac country of western France, and settled in Haiti. The family business began in 1862, and he applied the double distillation method used for cognac to Haitian sugarcane. That decision, rather than any recipe, is what has kept the house distinctive for more than a century and a half.

In 1949 the operation moved to the Plaine du Cul-de-Sac, the cane growing plain inland from Port-au-Prince, so the distillery sat among the fields it drew from. Fresh cane juice cannot travel or wait, which is the practical reason agricole distilleries are built where the cane is.

The business has stayed in family hands throughout, passing down the Gardere line, and Delphine Nathalie Gardere has led it since 2017.

Haiti has not made any of it easy. The 2010 earthquake killed two employees, left many more without homes and destroyed a quantity of ageing stock, and production has been interrupted repeatedly since. That Barbancourt has kept releasing aged rum through all of it is a large part of why the name carries the weight it does among rum drinkers.

For the molasses side of the Caribbean, the Pusser's and Foursquare pages are the obvious comparison.

How to drink it

Rhum Barbancourt splits neatly by age. The 4 Year is a mixing rum and it makes a very good Daiquiri, three parts rum to one part lime with a little sugar syrup, shaken hard over plenty of ice. It also makes a cleaner rum punch than a molasses rum does, because the cane character survives the citrus.

The 8 Year Five Star is the crossover bottle. It mixes well enough for an Old Fashioned or a Manhattan variation and it is perfectly good neat. If you are buying one Barbancourt, buy this one.

The 15 Year is for drinking neat at room temperature, in a tulip glass rather than a balloon, with no ice and no water. Give it a few minutes in the glass first.

Cane Blossom and Volcanic Cane are both cask finished, so treat them the way you would a finished whisky. Neat, unhurried, and not in a cocktail.

At the table, Barbancourt goes with dark chocolate, coffee, roasted nuts and anything carrying vanilla or caramel.

An opened bottle keeps well for a year or more stored upright and out of direct light.

More from this origin and style:

Depaz · Saint James · Agricole Rhum