Martinquaise Rhum is by far my favorite, after comparing it to scores of rums that I have tasted from all over the world. The Martinique chili pepper is also my number one choice of fiery chili peppers I have consumed, besides being very hot, which it has in common with many other peppers, it has a lovely floral aroma and flavor that other hot peppers do not. Trois Rivières I recall as being especially good although, you cannot complain about any of the rums produced on Martinique or to a lesser extent on the nearby island of Guadeloupe.
While seated in the back seat of a car on my way to a party in the north of the island, I was surprised by a sudden attack without provocation by a centipede or “millepied” as they are called in French, which jumped out of a jacket pocket hanging on a window on the other side of my seat, it bit me and immediately disappeared under the seat. My longtime friend Gaetan de Lucy de Fossarieu, whose family have been in the rum business on the island for years, pulled the car alongside the entrance to a pharmacy at the next small village and they gave me some medicine for the bite, but Gaetan affirmed, “The best medicine is waiting at the party”. After drinking a couple of “petit punch”, a drink made from local rum agricole, sugar cane syrup, with a twist of lime squeezed to release the oil from the skin, and finally an ice cube or two; I almost forgot I was bitten!
Rhum agricole, which comes mostly from the French Caribbean island of Martinique, is made from fresh sugarcane juice. It has a lovely, lively flavor with a lingering mineral aftertaste provided by Martinique’s volcanic soil. Newly cut cane will begin to ferment within hours of being harvested, so the distillery is better to be as close as possible to the cane fields.
