Clairin Sonson Single Village Rum from Haiti is the last frontier of rum, and rum in Haiti is known as Clairin (kleren), a spirit unique only to Haiti with deep cultural ties. It is the rum of the people.
Clairin – a funky, full flavoured style of rum made in Haiti, generally from fresh crushed cane juice or sugar cane syrup. These spirits are made in tiny quantities by expert artisan producers. Clairin is very special (we would even say exciting) juice with a unique flavour profile. There are hundreds of Clairin ‘micro-distillers’ in Haiti, each with a quite distinct product, often family secret rum styles – the result of generations of learning & perfecting.
In exploring the island, Velier discovered the unthinkable: in the whole of the Caribbean combined there are only 49 operating distilleries, but in Haiti there are over 500! The distilleries are artisan productions with most of them being small shacks dotted around the countryside, producing for the consumption of their own villages. Locally, Clairin can be bought roadside from big plastic jugs. It has never been previously bottled and it plays an important role in Haitian culture, and is an essential part of daily life in Haiti.
Clairin is the only natural rum in the Caribbean! Producers are everywhere; often in the middle of sugar cane fields one can find wooden mills, stills and fermentation vats that are typically made of oak or mango wood. Clairin is made from indigenous cane varieties, non-hybridized, with no chemical interference in the agriculture.
Due to the lack of industrialization, their processes are still ancestral. They are spontaneously fermented with no yeast selected, distillation is archaic, and there is no filtration. This is because Haiti is the only Caribbean territory who rebelled against slavery and actually won the revolution in 1804, and today it is the only country that has remained untouched from industrialization. Haiti is wonderfully “pure” and in some ways, it’s so far in the ‘past’ that it’s in the future!
Clairin is considered to be the highest quality cane spirit with undiscovered and amazing aromatics. In the world of rum, enthusiasts
and bartenders have a new frontier of taste to explore.
Similar to Mezcal, the process of making it is:
- entirely organic and pesticide free;
- hand cut, native grown sugarcane;
- spontaneous fermentation with no added yeasts
- once distilled in fire or steam heated pot stills to bottling proof
Clairin Sonson Single Village Rum is truly handmade the way it has been for the last 200 years, bursting with flavour and true expression showcasing Haitian terroir!
