1 Bottle 1 Story: Saint James 1885

1885 takes us back to a time so distant that young people would find it hard to believe that it could even have existed...

That year, teenagers still didn't ride scooters but drooled over the Daimler, the first motorcycle (admittedly made of wood) equipped with an internal combustion engine capable of going over... 12km/h, before the first automobile literally eclipses it from the radars. What do you want, even in 1885, the world is spinning.

In 1885 as in 2023, for many, “life passed before we could live”. Thus, Victor Hugo leaves this world on May 22. He, who a few decades ago, in the prime of life and, like a prophecy, shouted loud and clear “Oh! Tomorrow is the big thing! What will tomorrow be like?” . Victor rum, tomorrow will be made of rum. Because at the very moment your breath was gone, some 6,000 kilometers from your hospital bed, men and women were working cutting cane in the fields of Martinique. That a thousand cradles of your pain, the sun bloomed and songs rose up. Let us cross the ocean for a moment to get closer to it.

In 1885, they made there as elsewhere, rum as best they could. And if Louis Pasteur - too - stands out this year for his vaccine against rabies, he has not yet done anything to facilitate the fermentation of rum bushes (his pasteurization process will not become necessary until the following year). Never mind, the person in charge of rum production at Saint James has more than one idea in mind: he heats the freshly pressed cane juice, delicately and above all without boiling it, just enough to eliminate germs. Clean and efficient. Then, he pours his elixir into a wooden vat, inoculates it with yeast and… the magic happens. In the open air and for several days. In 1885, we take our time, and as Mr Hugo said not so long ago: “reason is intelligence in exercise; imagination, intelligence in full swing.”

This is how a month of May, perhaps June or July, was born, a rum like so many others. A rum of its time, like so many men.


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It was not in May, but we met Marc Sassier, guardian of the Saint James temple, to ask him to tell us the story behind the Saint-James 1885 rum. Thanks to him, enjoy watching and good tasting, if by chance a glass worm is near you…