Martinique is a French-owned island in the Lesser Antilles, at the eastern edge of the Caribbean Sea. With its latitude of 14°N, Martinique has a tropical climate unsuited to viticulture. As a result, wine is not produced on the island, despite centuries of French influence (although see Tahiti). Martinique is very well known, however, for its Rhum Agricole, the French name for rum distilled from fresh cane juice. This high-quality spirit is one of the island's key exports and has been protected by its own AOC Martinique appellation since 1996.
Martinique island measures roughly 40 miles (65km) from north-west to south-east and about one third that distance across. It lies 125 miles (200km) north-west of another rum-producing island, the former British colony of Barbados. It was charted (and briefly visited) by Christopher Columbus during his voyages of discovery, but Spain made no attempt to colonize it. The first colonists – a group of French sailors driven by English forces from the nearby island of St. Kitts – made landfall in 1635. The island switched between British and French control several times during the 18th Century, but has remained a French Overseas Territory since the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815.
According to the island's local government website, roughly 30% of Martinique's surface area is given over to agriculture. The main crops are bananas, pineapples and sugar cane. The latter category is of most interest here, as it provides insights into Martinique's past, when the island was a key source of table sugar for the French mainland, and its present, when a large proportion of the sugar cane is used to make rum. Although far from the levels seen in the 18th and 19th Centuries, sugar-cane plantations now cover roughly 4000ha of Martinique. This figure is increasing steadily due to the rising popularity of rum and the rising price of sugar on world markets. The island now produces just over 70,500hL of Rhum Agricole each year.
Unlike most other rums, Rhum Agricole is made from freshly pressed cane juice rather than from molasses (the thick, black, syrupy by-product of sugar production). Its name means 'agricultural rum', and highlights that the spirit is a direct product of agriculture, rather than a by-product of the sugar industry as is molasses-based rum (Rhum Industriel). The style is also produced on Guadeloupe island, 100 miles (160km) north of Martinique.
The Rhum Agricole style was born of necessity rather than choice, when France began sourcing its sugar from European-grown sugar beet rather than Caribbean-grown sugar cane. Having lost its dominant export market, Martinique's sugar production declined rapidly. In the absence of molasses, the Martinicans began making rum directly from cane juice. Because its production process does not involve the repeated heating and cooling of cane juice, Martinique's Rhum Agricole lacks the smoky, caramel-like aromas found in molasses-based rums. It is instead finer and slightly fruitier. For more information about rum production, see rum.
