Rhum Habitation Beauséjour: The Martinique Heritage of HBS Rum

Founded around 1670, Habitation Beauséjour embodies the soul of Martinique: a colonial residence, a street of black houses, and an astonishing water wheel bear witness to its organization of yesteryear. The canal, dug by slaves between 1800 and 1810, still irrigates the land and supplies the house with water. At the beginning of the 20th century, Amédée Knight, an engineer and senator from Martinique, made the operation prosper: the surface area increased from 136 to 285 hectares, and the distillery produced the famous "HBS rum," which won a gold medal at the Colonial Exhibition in Paris in 1932. Sold in 1928 to Lucy de Fossarieu's béké, Beauséjour maintained the quality of its HBS until the post-war period, before the banana boom. Today, Jean-Louis, great-grandson of Amédée Knight, is bringing sugar cane back into the spotlight and reviving the authenticity of the family's agricultural rum.