California has the Napa Valley. France has Bordeaux. The French Caribbean island of Martinique has the Route des Rhums.
In what just might be the rum capital of the Caribbean, Martinique, which specializes in rhum agricole, or rum made from sugar cane juice, not molasses, has 11 distilleries across a range of terrains, including those in the shadow of Mont Pelee, the volcano that utterly destroyed the city of Saint-Pierre in 1902.
Martinique’s story begins and ends with sugarcane, and to understand the history and nature of rum is to understand the island.
See more in the latest Caribbean Journal video above.
