1 Bottle 1 Story: Barbancourt Veronelli
For this new issue of 1 Bottle 1 Story (1B1S), we are going to focus on another legendary bottling which will have marked the entire history of so-called "independent" bottlings: the Réserve Veronelli from Barbancourt...
Let's take a brief moment back into the context of the time: we are in the 1970s and rum, on the Italian market, is barely there (except for a few rare bottles reserved for those in the know). The fashion is especially for (Scottish) Whiskey and no one is yet interested in sugar cane spirit. However, this is the moment chosen by Luigi Veronelli, accompanied by the importer Bonfanti, to visit Haiti.
Born in Milan in 1926, Luigi Veronelli was an oenologist, gastronomic critic, anarchist and writer during his life. An explosive mixture which will make him a central figure in the promotion (and diffusion) of Italian gastronomic heritage throughout the world. He will be at the origin of numerous battles for the preservation of agricultural and food diversity which will have allowed the creation of the "Denominazione Comunale d’Origine", the Italian equivalent of french Controlled Designation of Origin.
No real archive refers to the bottling that brings us here but we can only salute the audacity of the character, crazy enough to be interested in rum when no one was -yet- paying attention to it. This reserve will even be released well before the legendary rums of Silvano Samaroli or Pepi Mongiardino from Moon Import, yet they are also well ahead of their time.
Nearly half a century ago, Luigi Veronelli decided to go to the Barbancourt distillery. Was his idea of selecting a barrel? No one really knows, but his tireless curiosity will lead him to do what no one else has done before him. He undoubtedly already knew the classic range, distributed in Italy by the importer Baretto from the 1950s: the 3-star Barbancourt rum (4 years of age), the Special Reserve (8 years) and the 15-year-old Domaine Reserve. marketed from the 1960s.
Walking through the cellars, Luigi Veronelli sets his sights on a barrel of 25-year-old rum, probably distilled in the 1950s and entirely aged on site.
Barbancourt's production at the time
Third generation at the head of Barbancourt, Jean Gardère has just taken over management of the company. We are entering the post-war period and this former lawyer will develop Barbancourt rum like no one before him. Entrepreneur and visionary, he was the instigator of the modernization of the Société du Rhum Barbancourt which, in 1949, relocated all its production to the Domaine de l'Etoile (étoile= star, hence the logo), in the plain of Cul-de- Sac, in Port-au-Prince.
Of further historical importance, it was not until 1952 that Barbancourt produced cane juice for the first time from sugar cane grown on its own plantation (on the Barbancourt estate). The rum chosen by Luigi Veronelli therefore marks the beginning of this adventure, and remains a true historical vestige of an entire era and of this new chapter in the history of Barbancourt, and of Haitian rum more generally.
The pure sugar cane juice then ferments for three days using native yeasts, before being distilled in a Charentais-style pot still for double distillation. A manufacturing process which will be abandoned in the 1990s in favor of a more modern (and productivity-oriented) continuous column system.
A first, and still a unique case
The Veronelli Reserve will be released in 1981 on the Italian market in 1,196 numbered copies, after a very long aging in 800 liter Limousin oak barrels.
Here, we must remember that no one has ever sold rums this old (in Italy, but also well beyond), and even less from Barbancourt. To this day, more than fifty years after its bottling, there is still no equivalent. However, the opportunities must not have been lacking, even if the natural disasters which devastated Haiti did not help matters, quite the contrary.
It is also the first collaboration that Barbancourt embarked on, and still one of the only ones today...
