Rhum Clement Vieux X.O. Rhum Agricole

XO is Clément's long-aged rhum — a minimum of six years, the AOC's XO threshold, from the estate that's been making agricole since 1887. Homère Clément, a doctor and mayor, bought the Domaine de l'Acajou in Martinique that year and, having studied brandy-making in France, began making rhum from fresh cane juice; his son Charles built the distillery in 1917, and today the rhum is distilled at the Simon distillery and aged and blended at Habitation Clément, the estate that's now a museum, gallery, and garden. XO is fresh cane juice distilled on a copper Creole column, aged a minimum of six years — the Clément house blend draws on rhums up to ten years old — in a combination of virgin and re-charred oak barrels, slowly hydrated, and bottled at around 42% ABV with nothing added under the AOC; check your label. Six-plus years of tropical oak on Clément's cane goes deep: expect a nose of dried fig, prune, toasted oak, cocoa, and tobacco with the house's orange-peel and spice signature, opening into a rich, rounded, medium-full palate of caramel, dried fruit, licorice, and warm baking spice with the cane's vegetal edge now a whisper underneath, finishing long, dry, and elegant. Spirits Review places it above the VSOP in the estate's ladder of age. Honest note: it's a gentle-proof sipper in the refined French-island style, not a cask-strength bomb. For a cigar, a Ti' Punch vieux, or neat, it's Clément's old rhum. Since 1887.

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