Food & drinking culture

With Rhum agricole in Martinique, the first pairing is what the rum itself brings: sharpness and freshness against fat. Accras de morue, fried balls of salt cod with chili, appear at almost every apéritif. The grassy blanc cuts through the frying fat.

Sainte-Marie lives off the banana, and bananas feature on the region's menus in both savory and sweet dishes. Alongside these are Boudin créole, a blood sausage with chili and herbs, and Colombo, a curry with chicken or goat, which came to the Antilles with immigrants from India.

The island's most famous drink is the Ti' Punch: a splash of rhum blanc, a piece of lime and a little cane sugar syrup, without ice and without fuss. The Planteur is the long version, rum with fruit juices, suited to the beach and midday.

Anyone visiting the region will find in Sainte-Marie the Saint-James rum museum with its old sugar-factory machinery. JM welcomes visitors to its habitation in Macouba, where the path winds between sugarcane and bananas up the mountain. Both places make visible what you later taste in the glass.

Grand arôme from the Baie du Galion also plays a role in the kitchen: it belongs in rum baba and other cakes, where its syrupy note soaks into dough and cream. Bananas, too, come to the table with rum, flambéed or fried in batter, and a splash of aged Agricole rounds off fruit salad and vanilla cream. Here, wood and vanilla in the vieux sit alongside the caramel sweetness of the fruit, without overpowering it.