Bellevue 20 Year Old 1998 Valinch & Mallet Exclusive Single Barrel Cask Strength Guadeloupe Rum (Damoiseau)

This exceptional cask was distilled in 1998 on the island of Guadeloupe at the Bellevue Distillery on Marie-Galante. There are three different “Bellevue” distilleries in Guadeloupe. It’s been aged tropically for 20 years in American oak and bottled at full strength without any additions or adjustments. While Guadeloupe is famous for its fresh sugar cane distillates, this product was produced using a molasses base in the off season on the same stills that produce the agricole. The cask yielded only 120 bottles, and less than half made their journey to the USA.

Updated:

This is from a batch of molasses rum distilled at Damoiseau in 1998. It was acquired by The Main Rum Company in Liverpool who, with Damoiseau as protected brand name, re-casked it and labelled it as Bellevue after the estate upon which the distillery sits. These are not to be mistaken for the distillery of the same name on the neighbouring island of Marie-Galante, which to add to the confusion is also run by Herve Damoiseau’s cousin. The first of these 1998 vintage Damoiseau appeared on the independent scene in 2013, with a proliferation across various brands in the years following. They have been labelled as Bellevue, Grande-Terre, and on a couple of occasions mistakenly identified as South Pacific (a distillery in Fiji).

As it turns out, this rum was mistaken by the bottler as being from the Marie-Galante distillery. The name of the island has since been edited out of images for the bottle on their website and it has been correctly listed as a traditional rum rather than an agricole.