They delight wine merchants, delighted to decorate the display and shelves of these bottles imprisoning the tropics, with the combined grace of rum, fruits and spices which macerate there. Mango, pineapple, passion fruit, vanilla, lime, coconut, but also hibiscus, bananas, lychees, cocoa bean, macadamia nuts, peppermint thus ripple in cane alcohol, promising many walks greedy. And the French are part of the trip. In less than five years, the sales of arranged rums have more than doubled and there are almost fifty brands of what the administration officially designates as “rum punch”.
Now marketed in a “ready-to-drink” version, arranged rum has long been limited to “home made” preparations. Particularly in Reunion, where countless households have always collected jars in which infuse the wonderful variety of fruits from Ile Bourbon. A way of “arranging” a local rum, for a long time much less valued than those of the Antilles. Reunionese brands, such as Chatel or Isautier, have certainly bottled this know-how for decades, but for distribution that has long remained confidential in mainland France.
The freshest fruit possible
Is it because cities like Nantes or Saint-Malo were once at the center of the rum and spice trade? We owe in any case to the Bretons the new popularity of the “arranged” in France. Among these pioneers, three fellow creators of the Breiz’île brand, deciding, at the very beginning of the 2000s, to market the recipes that made the success of the drinks served in their restaurants in the Saint-François marina, in Guadeloupe, and in Camaret. -sur-Mer, at the tip of Finistère.
Like them, a Nantes resident, Cédric Brément, whose “home-made” multiples shone during the third half of his basketball team, will create Ti rums de Ced ‘. Launched in 2011, the brand will assert itself as the locomotive of a booming drink. “In ten years, we have gone from 13,000 to 550,000 bottles”, is proud of Arnaud Bonnet, marketing manager of the house, bought at the end of 2018 by the spirits distributor Dugas.
The secret of a success which has attracted many followers: “ “Premiumize” this category by taking extreme care in the quality of the fruits, spices, rums and syrups used ”, book Arnaud Bonnet. Supplied by local producers or importers from MiN de Nantes (the second largest market after Rungis), the fruits, always ripe to perfection, must be cut less than two minutes before bottling with agricultural rum from Martinique or from Guadeloupe and custom made cane sugar syrup. “The infinite variety of possible formulas makes it possible to reach a wide range of consumers”, he insists. If 20 references are permanently in the catalog of Ced ‘(with “Victoria pineapple” or “mango, passion fruit” as bestsellers), nearly 250 recipes have been offered for ten years.
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