Habitation La Mauny

The Habitation La Mauny is a distillery located in the town of Rivière-Pilote.

Open Monday to Friday from 9 am until 5 .30 pm, Saturday from 9 am to 1 pm. Guided tours are payable (Monday to Friday at 10 am, 11 am, 12:30 pm, 2 pm, 3 pm and 4 pm and Saturdays at 10 am, 11 am and 12 noon).

Itinerary

Habitation La Mauny

As soon as you get out the car, you will see a train near the parking lot and the shop just behind.
Go to the shop in order to make the guided tour by train, the cost of this visit is 3.50 euros per adult and / or a tasting of the different rum offered.

Sit comfortably on the train, a driver, with a microphone, will tell you the history of the distillery and explain how La Mauny rum is distilled from cane to AOC rum (
Controlled Appellation of Origin), a guarantee of its quality.

 A bit of history…….

In the nineteenth century, many distilleries of rum were mainly dwellings of sugar. They distilled their rum from molasses resulting from the manufacture of sugar. The rise of the invention of the steam engine and its adoption in sugarhouses will intensify and concentrate sugar production in large factories. The isolated dwellings will then concentrate exclusively on the manufacture of agricultural rum, improved by the adoption of the tray column imported from Europe replacing the still. After 1960, the closure of most sugarhouses put an end to the production of industrial rum. The agricultural rum takes place with these flavors and its terror, making it well-known rum all over the world. Among the nine still steaming distilleries, the Habitation La Mauny has remained an artisanal distillery.

Ferdinand Poulain, Account of Mauny, gave the name of this rum in 1749. He married the daughter of a planter who owned land in the commune of Rivière-Pilote and gave his name to the estate.

It is in 1820 that the estate La Mauny develops a production of agricultural rum elaborated with the juice of the canes of the domain.

In 1923, the estate changed ownership and was bought by brothers Theodore and Georges Bellonie who devoted themselves both to the production of rum by modernizing the production unit as early as 1929. The installation of a distillation column, a steam engine and new grinding mills will significantly improve rum production.

In 1950, it is the full boom for Habitation La Mauny, whose bottles appear in the hotels, cafes and restaurants of the island and internationally.
In 1996, La Mauny rum has obtained the Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée (A.O.C).

The visit by train begins with a first stage with a view of the ruins of the time and the Habitation (now used for welcoming people wishing to make festivities).

The train continues along orange trees. The La Mauny estate has specialized itself in the production of local orange, which is used to produce local juices sold throughout the island.

You now arrive to the distillery with the sugar cane reception area where the trucks unload and where the crane retrieves and sends the cane through the crushers to get the juice. You can observe two types of cane cutting, by hand or with machines, visible to the way the cane presents itself on the reception area.

Then you go along the distillery on the left, where there is a considerable volume of bagasse (When I went there it was out of the production season) that will serve as fertilizer in the fields or to feed the steaming furnace steaming the steam engine and helping the columns to distill alcohol.

You will go around the distillery to stop at the fermentation tanks of the recovered cane juice and the driver will then explain the process of making the rum to the exit of the column.

Three different rums are produced in the Mauny distillery. You observe several columns, three columns for La Mauny rum, a column for Trois-Rivières rum and one for Duquesne rum. Each rum will have its particularity thanks to its distillation column (made with more or less copper and stainless steel) and its name with the cane coming from each agricultural field.

End of the visit, the train takes you back to the car park and you can now taste the various rum of the Habitation.

Personally, the Spicy rum has left me an excellent taste memory and can be used for cocktails. Other derivatives have been made with pineapple for example to carry out Pina Colada. Do not hesitate to browse their website to find out more about the different rum designed by Habitation La Mauny. 

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Dom Loisirs et Culture at your service.

OLIVIER Damien, your humble guide.

The Dom Loisirs et Culture Team is comitted to protecting the biodiversity of overseas departments.