During his visit to the capital for the back-to-school trade fairs, we were able to chat with François Longueteau fils, cellar master and head of marketing for the house. He told us about the brand new 125th anniversary vintage, his job as cellar master, and also about the new Longueteau brand, Papillon, which we will be hearing more and more about in the future…
Can you tell us about this famous 125-year vintage?
It is a blend of 3 vintages: 2008, 2009 and 2010. It is a lovely vintage, which stands out from the 120th anniversary vintage for which we had chosen great vintages from the house. Here we have stuck to something simpler, even if we will do something extraordinary for our 130th anniversary.
Here, we are more on a "signature" vintage, on the spirit of the house, with a finely wooded side and a nice complexity. We chose these vintages to bring the red fruit side that we also find in eaux-de-vie like Genesis for example. This is what we wanted to exacerbate, with always this finely wooded, elegant, complex signature. I think and I hope that it is successful, in any case we are proud of it.
Do these vintages correspond to the years in which you started working as a cellar master?
No, because I arrived in 2011, so it was just before me. So there is not much stock on these vintages. Before that, my grandfather made old rums "by default". When he had not sold all his white rum, he took a few barrels here and there. Sometimes he put one barrel, sometimes 25, but it was not a habit, so there was a bit of dispersion in this matter! (laughs).
The real aging policy itself therefore started in 2006. We can say that 2008, 2009 and 2010 are the first rushes of that period.
How did you learn the profession of cellar master?
When I joined my father in 2011, I learned the ropes with experiences in different worlds. Initially, I came to help our family structure in the marketing and sales areas, since we were not very structured at the time in these areas .
Then , as in any small family business, you stick your nose in everywhere. Beyond the missions that my father had entrusted to me at the time, I help everyone a little, in production, in the cellar, wherever there is a need for a helping hand.
That's where I started to put my nose in the barrels. Once again, it's a family story; my father has been making me smell rum since I was 8 or 9 years old, I had my first ti'punch at 13, so it's almost innate. Obviously, with this return to the sources in the cellars, the barrels and the casks, I find an environment that I like.
And then there is everything to do, I arrive in 2011 and the policy of developing old rums started in 2006, so it is still recent. I am starting to understand, so it is me who begins to receive the coopers, all these people also capable of helping me to better understand the why of the wood, the barrels etc.
“These are encounters, men and women who have allowed me to enrich this vision and discover many things.”
I completely took ownership of the winery at that point, but it wasn't predefined at the start. I'm very clear about this, I don't have any formal training on this subject at the start, so it's a learning process. You have to taste, taste, taste again , and be passionate.
I really took possession of the cellar in 2012, and 9-10 years later, here I am completely invested in it. I really respected the tradition, I stayed on this authentic side that represents the Longueteau brand and rums.
My very first creation vintage is the Prélude . It is part of the technical and aromatic evolution of Longueteau rums. It is once again a story of men. In 2014, I met a cooper (Emmanuel Boudaric from the Quintessence cooperage) with whom we exchanged a lot. He is someone extremely competent, who brought me a lot of elements, a lot of solutions, proposals. So we did some tests, and the Prélude ( in the Harmonie collection, editor's note ) was released in 2017.
How many barrels do you have aging today?
When my grandfather and father handed over the business in 2005, we took over a fleet of about 80 barrels. Today we have 500, which is more than enough at the moment, but there is a huge amount of room for improvement. This is part of the plans, since we are currently building a winery that will take us from 500 to 2,000 barrels in 2024. Normally, in 2027, we will have 3,500 barrels.
It's a big investment, but we were lucky to be part of the recovery plan. We have a team that worked on this plan and on what the State offered us, so we got a sum of €800,000 to start the work, which is very good on a €5 million project!
Do you only work with French oak?
Yes and no. On the one hand, it is part of my desire to continue the tradition. My father, my grandfather, my great-grandfather, even if there was no aging policy, bought French ex-cognac barrels no matter what. The Longueteau family is from Charentes Maritimes, so there was this strong link that my great-grandfather and my grandfather in particular wanted to keep. I did not want to change that, so today, for the Longueteau brand, we do either ex-cognac or new French oak.
On the other hand, two years ago, we created the second brand Rhum Papillon, for which we only have American oak, whether ex-bourbon or new. I didn't want to touch the tradition, the know-how of the Longueteau family with the brand that bears our family name, and Papillon allows us to have fun, to broaden the field of possibilities. We had never tested the American oak barrel, which brings more vanilla, more roundness, more deliciousness, where the French oak will give more fruit and more elegance. These are radically different aromatic approaches, which we like to treat today.
Even though Papillon is young (we only have brown and old in very small quantities), this allows us to treat the two aromatic profiles differently.
Perhaps the lower price of American oak also allows it to respect Papillon's pricing policy, which is destined to be a little less high-end than Longueteau?
Indeed, American oak, whether new or used, is much cheaper. An ex-bourbon barrel costs around 90-100 euros today, while an ex-cognac barrel costs around 450 euros. But the intention is not to say that one brand is more premium than another. I consider Papillon to be a "premium" brand of agricultural rum, or at least I want it to be that way.
It remains a Longueteau entity, so a small distillery, which does not make 6 or 7 million liters per year. So the entry-level / large volume side, we do not know how to do. The idea is to really treat Papillon as a high-end brand, with an aromatic profile different and complementary to that of Longueteau. And then in any case, it is agricultural rum , so whatever happens it is high-end.
The distinction that can give this slightly less premium touch is that Longueteau is not and will never go to supermarkets, while Papillon has been present at Auchan since its launch. We can have this notion that it is indeed more entry-level. There will be a packaging relaunch that will take place at the end of the year on Papillon, because we had wanted to treat this brand in a festive spirit (festivals, evenings, etc.), but Covid has given us a blow in the wing... So we will come back to make it clear that we are still on a premium product, certainly Caribbean, certainly West Indian, certainly Guadeloupean, but with a completely different communication, design and especially aromatic axis.
P apillon is sold in supermarkets, but will it also be available in wine shops?
Yes, today in mass distribution you have the white and the brown. The brown is aged for 6 months in very marked and new ex-bourbon barrels, to have this very vanilla and very gourmet side. It was also voted best aged-under-wood rum in the world at the ISS Awards last year, so that means we did a pretty good job on the first batch.
Then, from 2022, there will indeed be vintages at wine merchants, and in particular a 3-year-old rum, both ex-bourbon and new American oak barrel. In another spirit, we will also have a Spicy range which will be at wine merchants from next year, still in this spirit and this Guadeloupean dynamic.
These are spiced , so there are added elements like honey, orange zest, cinnamon, vanilla… with 24 grams of sugar per liter, which remains quite low in dosage in the world of spiced. The idea is to treat the Guadeloupean side, which likes things a little round, a little gourmet, so we want to stay in this spirit.
With Papillon, the idea is to try things. This involves this American oak barrel side, in order to invite people to start understanding the world of rum through agricultural methods and not through anything else. So we have this fairly sweet, fairly delicate brown rum, and a deliberately dosed spiced, but with a fairly dry agricultural profile behind it. I think we can start with this type of product rather than starting with much sweeter, much more Spanish-speaking things.
It reminds me of Toucan's Spicy, which had this fun side but also a really "cane" side...
Yes, it is important to reassure. When you start with this type of rum, it is not too strong in alcohol and a little sweet, but at the same time you have these agricultural rum markers that should not surprise you the day you are ready to start with a dry alcohol, like Longueteau. Somewhere, we also want to say that on the Papillon entry-level range , we are preparing for slightly drier things from Longueteau, 50%, 6.2 % , etc.
Coming back to the barrels and Longueteau: you use cognac barrels and new barrels, can you tell us more ?
On ex-cognac barrels, I don't always have the information. I don't work with cognac producers in particular, since I always go through my cooper who will collect different barrels. These are 300 or 350 liter barrels, but I don't necessarily have information on the types of toasting at the start, or whether the previous alcohol was cognac or brandy.
On the other hand, from 2014, when I discovered new barrels and the amplitude possible on these barrels, I started to work a lot on them, and there I chose very specific things according to what I wanted to do. On Longueteau, I think of the old Genesis, the amber Genesis or the Prelude, for example, which are 100% new barrels, I am on 225 liter barrels, low heat intensity and medium length. For the moment, we are only on oak from the Tronçais forest.
I wanted a fine grain that would give me this fruity notion, this evolution towards the delicate fruit, while a large grain would give me much spicier notes, and a much heavy and strong toast would give me much more bitter notes. I prefer to stay on an elegant wood and on the fruitiness of the cane and the original white rum .
Perhaps it is easier to work with fine grain, as coarse grain can impact the rum too quickly?
It's not really a question of ease, but rather of aromatic choice. Typically, if we take the example of Papillon brown rum, these are also 225-liter barrels, in American oak, in gros grain and long toast. The gros grain will give us this very present note of vanillin, and in addition, by heating it a lot, we will exacerbate this vanilla note and get these almost caramel notes. So it's not a question of ease but rather of the aromatic profile that we are looking to have.
On the other hand, with the coarse grain, it is certain that if you do not check your barrel and the intensity of your aging regularly, you can very quickly move on to very bitter, very black, very smoky notes, and going back is impossible! Whereas, effectively, with a fine grain, if you want to intensify it, you just have to give it a little pep with another barrel.
I taste my barrels every 4 to 6 months, to avoid going too far. I did it every 4 months at the beginning, and I'm more like 6 months today. In any case, all this must be handled with great delicacy.
I have often read that it is necessary to reduce rums before putting them in barrels , and even more so when they are in new barrels. How did you manage this aspect on the old Genesis which was put in barrels at more than 70%?
It is the choice of not heating the barrel much, which means that on a very high degree, you will extract more delicate notes. But you are completely right, you must indeed pay attention to the extraction that your alcohol is going to seek and to the barrel that you use. If you have a very strong alcohol and a very marked barrel, you will have a very bitter and very woody profile, almost raspy. Once again, we make rums as we like them, and if many people like them too, so much the better, and I do not like rums that are too woody.
So that was indeed part of the thinking we had at the beginning. We had to choose a very specific barrel profile, to be able to extract a delicate aromatic. These are the same profiles used on the Prelude and the Genesis : 225 liters, fine grain, low toast.
The advantage of these Genesis, amber and old, is that they go further than the "fashion" of raw column...
Yes, I'm going to "cock-a-doodle-doo" a bit (laughs), but we were the first to launch into this dynamic of brut de colonne. We never wanted to treat it in a purely commercial way, because brut de colonne is only of interest if there is an aromatic interest, a particular and well-worked structure . If it's to get out of brut de colonne because it's fashionable, because it's the trend, it's not possible.
Without being pretentious, we can say that we started this trend with Genesis. We saw a lot of friends get into brut de colonne, and today we are legitimate because we continued the process with amber rum, old rum, and there will be older rums in this collection in the months and years to come.
W e always respect the basic product, with the fruit, the sugar cane, it is very important and it is not a fad for us. It is a range and a profile that we love. The distiller is my brother, he has brut de colonne every day in front of his eyes, under his nose and on his palate, so these are necessarily flavors that we like, and we do it for that. It is controlled, it is like a racehorse that must be directed so that it goes as straight as possible. It represents two years of maturation, a lot of time and patience, but we do it because we love it!
You are part of the “Family Spirits Cartel”…
(The Cartel of Family Spirits brings together French producers such as Darroze (Armagnac), Dupont (Calvados), Drouet (Cognac), Michel Couvreur ( Whisky ), Jacoulot (Marc and Fine de Bourgogne), Metté (Eaux-de-vie d'Alsace) and Longueteau, editor's note)
I see where you're going with this 😉
The cartel makes sense in the notion of exchanging processes. We don't have the same job, but we have the same passion. That is to say, we have the same profiles; we are all distillers, and even if we don't work with the same fruit and we don't come from the same region, we all have this relationship with the fruit, with the land. That 's what brought us together, along with the fact that we didn't necessarily find a "terroir" and "passionate" echo in our respective federations, where there is a lot of politics, networking, but where we don't talk much about product. There is a notion of modesty, a bit of competition too, and the fact of finding ourselves with passionate producers from non-competing houses is part of the reasons why we get along well and it works well.
“So with this team, we only talk about fruit, about product, we highlight our respective difficulties in our different professions , etc.”
To go along with your question that I see coming (laughs): yes, there will be exchanges of barrels, spirits, work around the different origins. This has already been done in the past, between the different houses of origin of the cartel, these are things that will come out, and we will be part of this dynamic.
To come back to the aromatic will, I don't think that these will be things that will come out under the Longueteau brand, because once again I can't and don't want to change the tradition or the historical aromatic origin of Longueteau. But these will be nice things that could come out under the Papillon brand. We 'll have to be patient, because we only joined the cartel a year ago!
W e were at a cartel meeting a week ago, at the Dupont estate . Historically, when I was a teenager or young adult and I discovered other alcohols, rum and calvados remained my two favorite alcohols. For me, these are the two alcohols where, no matter the age of the product, you can still smell the original fruit. I am a big fan of calvados, so when Dupont asks us, we can only respond positively!
Knowing that you are autonomous today from the point of view of sugar cane, will this autonomy be sustainable given your growth objectives?
I will once again make the distinction between our two current brands. For the Longueteau brand, we are and will always be self-sufficient in sugar cane. All the cane comes from the estate. Indeed, in the evolution of Longueteau , at some point we will have to find other plots, other land. We are from Capester, from Capesterre-belle-eau, so we do not want any other terroir than that of Capesterre. At the moment, we are looking for new land not far from the estate.
Then, for Papillon, we already have canes from the estate and canes outside. Indeed, in terms of sugar cane capacity, we cannot make both brands with canes from the estate. So we have 3 varieties of sugar cane, 2 that come from the estate ( the blue and the red), and a third that is outside the estate but still comes from Capesterre-belle-eau, the yellow cane. We are farmers, we are nurserymen, so even if the sugar cane is not on our estate, it is a cane that we plant, monitor, maintain, and harvest ourselves. You are never better served than by yourself.
“On Papillon, I don’t rule out looking for other rods to try other profiles, provided that we are able to monitor everything”
On the "industrial" side, we currently produce 500,000 liters equivalent to 50%, or approximately 2,500 hectoliters of pure alcohol ( hap, editor's note ). With the current tool, without changing much, we have the capacity to produce approximately 4,500 to 5,000 hap. So we have the possibility of doubling, with the distillery that we have today. This is an objective that we have set for ourselves, but I do not want to go any higher, because I think that there would be a qualitative risk. Perhaps in 10 or 15 years, there will be technologies that will allow us to go further without changing the quality, but for the moment the objective is to maintain this quality.
The best soups are made in the oldest pots , so I don't know if a brand new column would do the same job as one that's already been in the distillery for over 40 years. It wouldn't be worn out in the same way; it would be cleaner, it would be more beautiful, but I'm not convinced that we would be able to make the same rum. Again, maybe in the future manufacturers will be able to provide us with the answers to our questions, but today that's not possible.
But we are far from that anyway. To be completely transparent, today out of the 500,000 liters that we produce, more than 120,000 are sold in bulk. It is possible for us to reduce this bulk, and it is already the case. We have already reduced our bulk supplies for 2-3 years, we continue to reduce them and we start there before going to buy other sugar cane.
I had read that a certain plot 11 was in organic conversion, what is the situation today?
It should have already been released, the problem is that in the Covid period, the packaging part is very complicated. We have had a lot of trouble managing packaging supplies for a year and a half now. I hope it will be released at the end of the year.
We are more on organic than on conversion, since we have been working this plot entirely in organic for 5 years. Except that today, I have difficulty getting along with Eco-Cert. At present, the organization does not know how to manage conventional and organic on the same estate.
Plot No. 11 is a plot of red cane, and I have 8 other plots of red cane that are treated with sustainable agriculture, but not organic. There is a fertilizer that is not organic, but which is very nourishing and which helps us a lot today, so it is difficult to do without it overnight. Eco-Cert does not want to certify this sugar cane for us, because there is conventional agriculture on the same estate.
The two options that were offered to us, and on which we did not give in, are: changing the variety of sugar cane, which is out of the question for us (if you change the DNA of your cane, you change the taste of your rum), and the second solution is to change the tax structure for this plot... We would have to create a company to manage this plot separately!
We showed them our working methodology, and it was completely validated, but it's really a story of paperwork...
In 2018, three new varieties of cane were being tested, where are these trials at?
Only the yellow cane that we talked about earlier was retained. It is entirely dedicated to Papillon, we do not exploit it on our estate. We have half a hectare in a nursery, where we do lots of tests, whether for CIRAD, INRA ( to make sugar as well as rum ) , and for ourselves. The yellow cane did not provide us with all the guarantees in terms of cultivation process on our estate, on the other hand it was aromatically very close to the red cane . But on the neighboring estates, which are located 4 or 5 kilometers away, they took better and developed better.
Do you also age the rums from the different plots separately?
I have a hard time defending the notion of plots in terms of aging. When you talk about the notion of plots, you are talking about terroir or environment. So these are extremely fine subtleties that must be understood very well. What is interesting is to compare the plots to understand the evolution of your agriculture, of your fruit, over time, according to a terroir. When we bring a barrel into the game, I believe it gives another dimension.
This is just my opinion, but no two barrels are the same, so when we compare two barrels from two different plots, which will have a different taste, I wonder if I will be able to say if this different taste comes from the plot. So we don't do it and we won't do it, unless at some point I have technical arguments that allow me to justify it.
Finally , are there any rums that you personally appreciate, in the Antilles and even elsewhere in the world?
I was born in Guadeloupe , I come from an agricultural rum culture, so I'm not going to lie to you and I'm going to tell you that I have a lot more trouble with foreign rums than with West Indian rums (laughs). I wouldn't allow myself to say that I don't like it or that I don't like it, but it's not in my philosophy, these are approaches that in terms of culture don't suit me.
On the other hand, in agricultural rums, I can name a bunch. I am a huge fan of Neisson, I love what they do. If I have to bring out a product from them, it is the XO Full Proof, a marvel. To stay in Martinique , the Cheval Bon Dieu from A1710 really pleased me. And then in Guadeloupe, the Bolokos vintage from Montebello is magnificent. The Bologne Confidentiels with Sauternes finish is sublime, and without mentioning a product in particular, Bielle is superb. I have all these products at home!
So we don’t just produce at Longueteau, we also drink!
(laughs) Yes! We drink sensibly, but we drink!