Saint James Velier 25th Anniversary Collection 10x70cl 6031637

Saint James  Velier 25th Anniversary Collection 10x70cl

The Saint James brand was founded in 1765 in Saint-Pierre by the alchemist priest, Edmund Lefébure, who had built a sugar mill and distillery on the Trouvaillant estate to raise funds for the Hospitaller order, Fathers for Charity. The order lost all of their possessions following the French revolution, and the estate on Martinique passed from the state into private hands. The most successful of these was François-Paulin Lambert, who took over the Saint James plantation in 1890 having worked at its distributor for many years. It was Lambert who patented the now iconic square bottle in 1882. His family ran the Saint-Pierre distillery until 1955, surviving both the devastating eruption of Mount Pelée in 1902, and the rum market collapse following the first world war. The following two decades saw a period of transition for Saint James, which converted for the first time to the production of agricole rather than molasses-based rums, and in 1974, funded by new owners Cointreau, moved to the new distillery at Saint-Marie where this was produced. Today it is run by La Martinquaise (who bought it from Remy Cointreau in 2003) and is one of the largest rum producers on the island, operating six creole column stills to produce over 4 million litres of rum per year.

Velier was founded by Casimir Chaix in Genoa in 1947 as a wine and spirits importer and distributor. By the 1980s they were still a small family-company with less than ten staff. This all changed in 1986 when it was purchased by Luca Gargano, a former brand ambassador for Saint James who was at the time still in his twenties. Under his direction, they selected their first single cask whiskies in 1992, and their first rum in 1996. In the decades that followed, Velier have gone on to become one of the most collectible brands in the industry, and Gargano has positioned them as the one of the foremost authorities and bottlers of rum anywhere in the world.

Velier has announced the launch of a vertical collection of ten Saint James millésimes in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Martiniquan AOC designation.