Down Island Spirits is an independent rum bottler founded by Mike Streeter that releases single casks without sweetening, and this is a rhum agricole from Saint James in Sainte-Marie, Martinique, one of the island’s oldest and best-known rhum houses. Like all AOC Martinique rhum agricole, it’s distilled from fresh-pressed sugarcane juice rather than molasses, here on a traditional Creole column still. This cask was distilled in 2017 and aged for six years before Down Island bottled it in 2023 from cask 07-772 A, at full cask strength of 57.9% ABV (115.8 proof), with nothing added. Down Island released it alongside its Brazilian Epris bottling as the first additions to its original lineup, taking the range from molasses rums into cane juice. Tasters on RumX find the classic agricole signature: sugarcane, herbal and earthy notes on the nose, with the palate adding a peppery edge to the fresh cane. Six years in wood rounds it without covering the grassy character that makes agricole worth seeking out. Sip it neat, or with a splash of water to bring the cane forward.
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