Written by Mika Tanimoto, Owner-Bartender, Bar Little Happiness — Hiroshima’s specialist whisky & rum bar with 1,000+ bottles
When I tell guests that there is a rum which appeared in a legendary Japanese manga series, their eyes light up immediately. The manga is Golgo 13. The rum is La Mauny. And the distillery behind it — Maison La Mauny in the Rivière Pilote valley of southern Martinique — has been making rum continuously since 1749.
A 275-Year Story
The official founding story of La Mauny is romantic in the best Caribbean tradition: a French nobleman from Brittany, the Count La Mauny, arrived in Martinique, met the daughter of a plantation owner, and was struck by what the French call a coup de foudre — a thunderbolt of love — that resulted in both a marriage and a distillery.
There is a competing version of events, naturally. Land rights in the colonial Caribbean were valuable and contested, and some historians suggest the alliance was as much strategic as romantic. After 275 years, the truth has dissolved into the cane fields. But either way, the union produced something that has endured longer than most institutions.
The Ti Train
The visitor experience at La Mauny is built around the Ti Train — a small, open-sided train that carries guests through the sugarcane fields and into the working distillery over a 50-minute guided tour. The train moves slowly enough to smell the cane as it passes, and deep enough into the facility to see the column stills operating with distillate running off the copper.
La Mauny uses a traditional Creole column still — a piece of equipment specific to Martinique’s rhum agricole tradition — with bubble cap trays inside the column that create additional contact between rising vapour and descending liquid. The process extracts a particular character from fresh sugarcane juice: greener, more vegetal, more aromatic than molasses-based rums, with a freshness that makes the raw distillate genuinely pleasant to taste even before maturation.
The distillery also produces Trois Rivières and Duquesne — two other Martinique rhum agricole brands that share the same production facility.
Martinique’s AOC
Martinique is the only rum-producing territory in the world with an Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée — the French quality designation that also covers wines like Champagne and Bordeaux. Martinique Rhum Agricole AOC requires that the rum be made exclusively from fresh local sugarcane juice, distilled on Martinique using specific equipment, and aged according to defined standards. The regulations are strict, the terroir is specific, and the character of the product is distinctive.
La Mauny, as one of the longest-established producers on the island, exemplifies what the AOC is designed to protect.
La Mauny and Martinique rhum agricole are available at Bar Little Happiness. Read the full Japanese column: little-happiness.jp/columns/martinique-la-mauny/
Bar Little Happiness | Hiroshima, Japan
Rum & Whisky specialists | 1,000+ bottles | English menu available
Open Mon–Sat 7PM–12:30AM, Sun 7PM–midnight
No cover charge. Walk-ins welcome.
english.little-happiness.jp