A home from home
Agricole may have been conceived in the Caribbean, but thanks to the Ferreira family, it has also laid down roots in Madeira
The style of rum known as agricole is most commonly associated with
French islands in the Caribbean, such as Martinique and Guadeloupe, where the terroir-driven style was first conceived. However, one distiller on the other side of the Atlantic is bringing a new spin to the agricole category.
O Reizinho was established in Santa Cruz on the island of Madeira in 1982 by Florentino Ferreira. His son Pedro, who now runs the distillery, explains that making rums was more of a hobby than a business at the time, with Florentino making small quantities for friends and family.
After jetting between South Africa and Madeira for much of the 1980s and 1990s, Pedro returned to the island in 2012 with the idea to officially found a rum distillery with his father. “We did it, growing slowly as an artisanal family-run business. In 2020 we produced 15,000 litres of rum, which is our personal record,” he says.
O Reizinho has helped to shape a subcategory of rum termed Portuguese agricole, or agricola de Madeira (an officially recognised designation). Like Caribbean rhum agricole it uses sugarcane juice as a base, as opposed to molasses, and aims to capture the fresh, sweet, vegetal character of the cane in its spirits.
Pedro finds that the agricole style produces a rum that is “much richer in flavour and smell”, although using fresh sugarcane does limit their production window to around four months of the year, whereas molasses rum can be distilled all year round.
While sugarcane is well suited to Madeira’s warm temperatures and fertile volcanic soil,
Pedro explains that O Reizinho faces different challenges to Caribbean agricole producers in managing the crop: “We have the advantage of having a northern African climate, which helps in the growth of sugarcane. However, the terrain makes harvesting very difficult and costly. As Madeira is a volcanic island there isn’t much flat land, so it requires manual labour which becomes expensive.”
It processes locally harvested sugarcane and ferments the juice in large tanks for three to four days, after which it is distilled on the facility’s Portuguese alembic still. The distillate is then rested for a few months before being bottled or filled into casks for further ageing. Similar to other agricole-producing countries with regulated Geographical Indications, a Madeiran rum must be matured for a minimum of three years to be called ‘aged’. For its ageing O Reizinho uses ex-Madeira wine casks, which lend a syrupy, fortified wine character that complements the agricole.
O Reizinho’s spirits range encompasses rums ranging from 45% to 61.2% ABV, as well as cask strength and pot still strength expressions. Independent bottler That Boutique-y Rum Company has released a handful of O Reizinho expressions, both aged and unaged. The distillery also produces a gin from its sugarcane spirit for a local company on Madeira.
When quizzed on the future of the rum industry, Pedro echoes the commonly heard view that rum is on the cusp of a rise in popularity like that seen in gin in the past decade. “I see a growing interest in rum as it can be more diverse and enjoyed neat or in cocktails,” he says.
“When I started with my father everyone wanted rum to make a local drink, poncho. Now I see a growing need to have aged rum and that it is more and more appreciated. Before I only had international people visiting, but I’m glad to say that lately a small group of locals are also curious about rum and want to learn about it.”
“We have the advantage of having a northern African
climate, which helps in the growth of sugarcane”