French Funk: Grand Arôme Rhum from Martinique (Le Galion) and Réunion (Savannah)

Most folks, even rum drinkers, associate rum production in the overseas departments of France (Martinique above all) with the agricole style made from fresh cane juice. But that wasn't historically the case: as I discussed way back in my first Rhum J.M. review (   • Rhum J.M. Rhum Agricole Blanc review  ), it took a British blockade, Napoleon, and the sugar beet to push the economics in that direction, and before then the French West Indies had been distilling the molasses by-products of sugar production like everyone else. In fact the Mark III Mai Tai (see    • Denizen Merchant's Reserve v. Rum-Bar Gold...  ) famously demanded a portion of "rhum traditionnel" made in just that way. Too bad no one makes it like that anymore, right?

Well, not quite. In fact there's one distillery still on Martinique - housed in Le Galion facility, the last sugar factory in the island - that still makes such a rum, and indeed still makes some of it in the higher-ester, so-called "grand arôme" style. (See https://cocktailwonk.com/2021/01/mart... for further, especially legal, details.) And if you're willing to leave the Caribbean altogether, Savanna distillery on Réunion (in the Indian Ocean) also continues to distill molasses (among a bafflingly large number of different rum styles - see http://leblogaroger.eu/index.php/en/2.... Savanna actually makes two high-ester grand arôme rums: one made in a short column style like Le Galion (the Lontan), and another made in a pot still (High Ester Rum Réunion, the so-called HERR). And all of these distillates are all still out there, just a pain to get ahold of.

Happily some enterprising independent bottlers along with Savanna distillery's own lineup have recently made that easier, so that I've finally been able to round up some samples of these unaged monsters. And as long as I've got them, why not review them? Here's the stats:

Le Galion Grand Arôme (Martinique, bottled for Aficionados/Fine Drams circa 2020; molasses distilled in traditional column, with 481.7 g/hLaa; 58.32% ABV), 87+
Savanna Lontan 57° Rhum Traditionnel Grand Arôme (Réunion, OB [for LMdW??] circa 2019; molasses distilled in traditional column; 57% ABV), 85-/100
Savanna Réunion Single Rum HERR (Habitation Velier, circa 2019; pot-distilled molasses; 61.1% ABV), 90/100

Thanks to u/stormstatic and u/TangentialTinkerer for the samples. All of these are excellent and enormously distinctive, well-deserving of far more attention than they get. (I'd buy full bottles of pretty much all of these if I could.)