Saint James

Saint James is a Martinique house that makes rhum agricole at Sainte-Marie on the Atlantic coast, and it has been selling under the same name since 1765, which makes it one of the oldest continuously traded rum brands anywhere. The square bottle is its signature and has been since the 1880s. The range on this page is unusually complete for a single producer. At the bottom sit the working bottles: Blanc at 40 percent and Royal Ambre at 45 percent, the amber being lightly cask rested and built for cocktails rather than sipping. Above them, VSOP, a twelve year old and a fifteen year old. Then the collector end: vintage bottlings from 1997 to 2006, several of them single cask and several above 50 percent, and the l'Essentiel carafe, which blends three vintages. There is also an organic blanc bottled at 74.2 percent, and Sucre de Canne, the cane syrup you need to make ti punch properly. Compare with J.M and Depaz.

History

The house was founded in 1765 at Saint-Pierre by a religious order, and the English sounding name was a commercial decision: the rum was aimed at New England, where a French saint would not have sold. The square bottle came a century later, introduced in the 1880s under the merchant Paulin Lambert, and it was a shipping solution before it was a brand asset, because square bottles pack tight in a crate and round ones do not. In May 1902 Montagne Pelee erupted and destroyed Saint-Pierre entirely, killing almost everyone in the town and wiping out most of the island's rum trade. The brand survived, and production was later consolidated at Sainte-Marie on the Atlantic coast, where Saint James distils today and runs a rum museum on the site. The rhum itself is agricole, pressed from fresh cane juice rather than fermented molasses, distilled once through a creole column and either bottled young or aged in oak. Martinique producers won an AOC in 1996, largely to stop the word agricole being used loosely, and it now governs cane, fermentation, distillation and ageing. The vintage bottlings on this page are a comparatively recent habit across agricole, and they show something molasses rum often hides: the year the cane grew in.

How to drink it

The blanc has one job above all others, and that is ti punch. Lime peel, a spoon of Sucre de Canne, 50ml of Blanc, stirred in a short tumbler and drunk at room temperature or over a single large cube. Royal Ambre belongs in a daiquiri or a rum old fashioned, where its light oak gives structure without swamping the cane. Aged bottlings should be poured at room temperature into a tulip glass, never chilled and never over ice, because cold shuts down the dried fruit and pepper notes that the ageing paid for. Anything at cask strength benefits from a few drops of water; add them one at a time and stop when the alcohol stops stinging. If you want one bottle to understand the house, take the VSOP, which shows both the cane and the wood without either winning. For food, aged agricole works with dark chocolate, coffee, aged Comte and roast pork with crackling. Opened bottles keep well for a year or two if the cap seals and the bottle stands upright out of sunlight, though a nearly empty bottle oxidises faster. Decant a carafe bottling only if you plan to finish it, and see carafes for serving ware.