Barbancourt was founded in 1862 by Dupré Barbancourt, who was originally from Charente. This heritage afforded him skills in the practice of double distillation, which he had already learnt in Cognac. When he died with no heirs, the distillery was passed to his wife’s family, the Gardères. In 1949, Jean Gardère moved the distillery to the centre of the estate’s sugarcane plantations, in the process modernizing the facilities and increasing production and exports. This included replacing double distillation with continuous distillation. Despite being the victim of an earthquake in 2010 that cost it a third of its stock, the distillery is still standing.

Barbancourt Réserve Spéciale 5 Etoiles, which is aged for 8 years, is the Haitian distillery’’s classic expression. This bottle is from the 1970s/1980s. At the time, Barbancourt still practiced double distillation in pot stills rather than the continuous distillation methods adopted in the early 1990s.