To get to the distillery Chelo one takes a long dirt road from the town of Saint-Marc to Saint-Michel de l’Attalaye in a magnificent natural enclave surrounded by mountains. Michel Sajous distillery is in the middle of a 30 hectare plantation, growing different varieties of cane, among which is the Cristalline. The distillation is made from a small traditional pot still composed of a 1000 litre boiler in direct contact with a fire of bagasse. The distillate is between 50° and 52° when it leaves the still and it is directly sent to Port-au-Prince to be bottled without any reduction to its alcohol content.
100% sugar cane, wild yeasts, pot still, still proof, 54.3% ABV.
Clairin Rums are from indigenous cane varieties, non-hybridized, with no chemistry in agriculture. Spontaneous fermentation with no yeast selected, archaic distillation, and no filtration. Haiti is the last frontier of rum and Clairin are the true rums of Haiti. In all the Caribbean there are 49 operating distilleries, in Haiti only there are 532. Producers are everywhere, often in the middle of the sugar cane fields, mills in wood, stills and fermentation vats that are usually made of oak or mango. For many reasons, due to the lack of industrialization, processes are still ancestral and it should be considered the best cane spirit possible.
The styles of the three producers selected by Velier are the true expressions of ‘terroir’. Always quite different batch per batch, as an all natural product. Clairin is the only natural rhum in the world.
