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THURSDAY, APRIL 22, 2010 ~ o ••••••
INTERNATIONAL
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EDITION
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PHOTOS BY CHARLES TRAINOR JR./THE MIAM~HERALD
PRECIQUS:A man drains a barrel of Barbancourt Rum into a bucket outside Port-au-Prince.
Every dro
counts
Oespite a series cfsetbacks, Haitian rum maker Rhum Barbancourtendures BY TRENTON DANIEL McClatchy
News Services
PORT-AU-PRlNCE - It has survived 19 coups, rnilitary rule, hurricanes and even a three-year embargo. But in the Jan. 12 earthquake, Haiti's best-known export and one of its oldest businesses, Rhum Barbancourt, suffered a $4 million setback. Amber bottles and white oak vats some containing rum as old as 15years - crashed to the dis- ' tillery floor. . It~oul~
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"'¡...·-y""'e-ar'""'s for production ot'ohe of the world's top rums to return to its prequake capacity, though the o.wner is hoping to resume bottling and shipping by late April or early May - an emphatic sigh of relief, to be certain, to rum connoisseurs the world over. "We are ready to recover," said Thierry Gardere, general director and fourth generation in the family to run the business. As distillery workers make repairs to pipes, vats
.and the aging room, Barbancourt soldiers on, yielding a cognac-like spirit that fans say maintains its cachet in spite oí Haiti's challenges. The rum is savored among niche drinkers in large part because it's made with hand-cut, locally grown sugar cane juice and not
molasses. "It's pretty spectacular that Barbancourt is still here, 'Ís still great, and is still setting a high standard that other companies have to match - especially at their luxury level," said Robert Burr, the Coral Gables, Fla., publisher of the Gifted Rums Guide. In the earthquake that claimed at least 200,000 lives and left more than a million homeless, not even the seemingly bulletproof Barbancourt eluded damage. Heavily hit was Bar.bancourt's aging room where 30 percent of the vats were
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The company also lost two employees, who died when their homes flattened. More than 25 percent of the employees saw their homes collapse, including Gardere's near the quakedestroyed Hotel Montana. Some homeless employees camped in a nearby soccer field along with 3000thers. "It was an interruption but not a devastating inter. ruption," said [im Nikola, senior vice president for • TURH TO RUM.
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THURSDAY, APRIL 22, 2010
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INTERNATIONAL •.•.........•
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EDITION
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CHARLES TRAINOR JR./THE MIAMI HERALD
. TENDER LOVE ANO CARE: General director of Rum Barbancourt,
Thierry Gardere, looks at a bottle of rum
being packed for shipping at a plant in Port-au-Prince.
Haitian rum maker endures • RUM, FROM lB
Crillon Importers, a New Jersey company that ships Barbancourt. "1 don't think the consumer in the U.S. market will even know there was an interruption." The company sells about $12 million ayear, Gardere said - modest compared to Bacardi, which earned $805 million in the 2009 fiscal year. The Haitian rum's biggest overseas market is the United States. Despite the relatively smali sales, Barbancourt has its circle of devoted fans, some of whom called for Haiti supporters to purchase the rum as a gesture of postquake solidarity.The brand even has its own Facebook page. "It's realiy popular with people who care what their drink tastes like," Nikola said. Before the quake suspended exporting, Burr and other Barbancourt aficionados were easy to spot at Mi-
ami International and john F. Kennedy airports. The travelers carried v suitcase-like boxes that contained sev'eral.rum bottles. Haiti was marked on' the side in bold letters. The company was founded in 1862 by Dupre Barbancourt, a Frenchman who moved to Haiti from the cognac-producing, region of Charente. That year, the United States recognized Haiti, an international pariah because of the slave revolt that secured independence from France in 1804. The sugar cane-carrying woman on the beige label is something of a mystery. One story holds that she is a "Vodou priestess;" another is that she's an agricultural deity. But Gardere said she is Barbancourt's first wife, a blond actress from France. Gardere said he doesn't know her narne. Barbancourt later remarried Nathalie Gardere but the couple didn't have -children. After Barbancourt died,
Nathalie Gardere took over and a nephew, Paul, after that, Under the Duvalier era in the 1950s, a rival company started marketing flavored rums under the narne [ane Barbancourt. The old Barbancourt family won the trademark dispute, though Gardere's father and his attorney were jailed for four hours because they declined to pay the judge a bribe. Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier released them, "It was a political thing more than anything else, against my father," Gardere said. During the 1991-94 embargo that sought'to pressure military leaders to resign after they ousted Haiti's President [ean-Bertrand Aristide in a 1991coup, the distillery struggled to stay afloat. "It was very tough for us to come ba "Gar e said. "It took us four years to reach the sarne level before" the sanctions. Today, the rum is an uneqúivocal source GÍ Haitian
pride - revered in the country and outside because ofits smooth cognac-like flavor. And it is like Haiti itself: A magnet for adversity as much . as it is a symbol of survíval, "1 enjoy Barbancourt so much because of the feeling 1get,' said Patrick Chery, 29, a computer technicián. "It feels like paradise,' Barbancourt has received heaps of praise through the years - some of its medals displayed on the label, Iust in December 2009, a newspaper tasting panel sarnpled 20 bottles of rum that had been aged for at least seven years. Barbancourt's 15-yearold Estate Reserve carne out on top, beating Bacardi. "Balanced and elegant, with. complex, lingering aromas and flavors of flowers, fruit, spices and beeswax,' the reviewers wrote. There are thr 'R:hünr Barbancourt dark rums: The three star, aged four years; the five star Reserve Special, aged eight; and Estate Reserve, aged 15years.