A doctor buys a sugar estate in Le François.

Rhum Clément dates its story to 1887. French Wikipedia’s article on the Habitation Clément says that on 19 April 1887 Homère Clément, a doctor and businessman whom it describes as one of Martinique’s first mixed-race physicians, bought the Domaine de l’Acajou at auction in Le François, on the island’s Atlantic side. The brand still puts that year on the bottle: The Spirits Business reported in May 2026 that “1887” is engraved in the glass of its new bottle.

The estate grew sugar cane before it made rum. According to French Wikipedia, Homère Clément built a distillery on the estate in 1917, encouraged by the wartime demand for rum during the First World War. His son Charles Clément took over the estate and the distillery in 1923, and the rum was first sold under the name Rhum Acajou, a brand created in 1930. It became Rhum Clément in 1940. A fire destroyed the distillery in 1938, French Wikipedia says, and it was rebuilt with a larger capacity.

Like the other rums of Martinique’s agricole tradition, Clément is distilled from fresh sugar-cane juice rather than molasses. That style gained legal protection in 1996: French Wikipedia’s article on rhum agricole says a decree of 5 November 1996, issued on the advice of the national appellations institute INAO, created the AOC Martinique for rhum agricole, the first appellation of origin in France’s overseas territories and the first for a white spirit. The rules, the same article says, require continuous column distillation and a raw distillate between 65 and 75 per cent alcohol.

The family business passed to the next generation after 1973, when Charles Clément’s sons took over its management, according to French Wikipedia. In 1986 the Clément family sold the company; Yves and Bernard Hayot bought the estate and the brand, and the property took the name Habitation Clément.

Green glass, an engraved date and a paper label.

Green is the colour the brand keeps returning to. When Rhum Clément introduced a new proprietary bottle for its aged range in May 2026, The Spirits Business reported that the redesign keeps the brand’s signature green as the anchor colour of the collection. The flagship VO uses cream and green tones, while the longer-aged expressions move toward copper, gold and amber as the rums get older.

The same report credited the bottle to the glassmaker Saverglass and the design studio Linéa. The name “Clément” and the year “1887” are engraved directly into the glass instead of being printed on it. The Spirits Business said the new bottle is about 23 per cent lighter on average than the previous design, that direct screen printing on the glass was dropped to make the bottle easier to recycle, and that all the labels are now printed on FSC-certified paper.

Drinks Intel reported on the same day, 12 May 2026, that the owner Spiribam planned to move the entire portfolio to the new bottle in all markets as existing stock sells through, and that the aim was in part to help the bottles stand out on the shelf. World Brand Design has also credited LINEA, the design agency of the Spirits Valley cluster in the Cognac region, with the packaging of Clément’s Rare Cask Collection.

The estate itself is part of the brand’s image. French Wikipedia says the presidents George H. W. Bush and François Mitterrand met at the Habitation Clément on 14 March 1991. The master’s house and its outbuildings were listed as historic monuments in 1991 and classified by decree on 9 August 1996.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all rum names: Planteray, Don Q, Pampero, Santa Teresa, Rhum Clément, Rhum J.M and Damoiseau. Rum brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family houses that still carry a founder’s name to labels that now belong to much larger drinks groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a cocktail bar.

A rum brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single bottle than by a label, a name and the place it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its rum is actually distilled, aged and bottled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its rum is made and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A distillery moved, an estate kept, and a group behind both.

The rum is no longer distilled on the old estate. French Wikipedia says the Clément distillery closed in 1988 and that production moved to the Simon distillery, also in Le François, while the ageing cellars stayed at the Habitation Clément; today the rum is distilled at Simon and aged and bottled on the estate. The old distillery was restored in 2003 and turned into a centre that explains rum-making to visitors.

The estate also houses an art foundation. French Wikipedia says the Fondation Clément opened a contemporary art space in the former vat house in 2007, and that its new building was inaugurated on 24 January 2016 with an exhibition by the Haitian-born painter Hervé Télémaque.

The owner is the Groupe Bernard Hayot (GBH), which French Wikipedia says Bernard Hayot founded in 1960 and which is based in Le Lamentin, Martinique. Its rums sit in a subsidiary, Spiribam. Drinks International reported in March 2025 that Spiribam, the group’s spirits division, had eleven spirits brands from distilleries in Martinique, Saint Lucia, Mauritius, French Guiana and France, including Rhum Clément and its Martinique stablemate Rhum J.M. French Wikipedia says the group bought the Burgundy liqueur maker Joseph Cartron in July 2021. Spiribam told Drinks International that it grows its own sugar cane, describing its business as agriculture, distillation and ageing.

For a design guide, Rhum Clément shows how a single founding date, a consistent green and a historic estate can carry a Martinique rum through a change of owner, a change of distillery and, in 2026, a new bottle that engraves the name and the year into the glass. Compare Rhum J.M, the Macouba rhum agricole in the same group, and Mount Gay, the Barbados rum that also leads with a historic date. For this guide we use Clément green, cream and copper with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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