Gourmet products local specialties and wines Atlantic Coast

The Compagnie du Rhum has been established in the West Indies since 2008 and includes an e-commerce site specializing in the sale of rums from the Caribbean and around the world. Marika and Philippe de Pompignan had the brilliant idea of creating a showroom in Martinique. It is located in Le François, symbolically opposite the Simon distillery. The website is very pleasant, well done and well supplied! This store is an extension of it and offers more than 1,000 Caribbean rums for sale online. Shipping is possible throughout the world, except in the United States.

Animated and colorful, the traditional market of La Trinité is a good place to buy tasty grilled chicken legs, fruits, and vegetables harvested in the morning, freshly caught fish, bread from the corner bakery, picnic supplies before going to the beach or discovering the Caravelle peninsula. Hidden under its large, completely restored market hall, it houses well-stocked stalls (spices, infused rums, homemade pâtés) as well as a few local craft stands to find a small souvenir to bring back home.

On Saturday morning, there are about twenty producers, members of the North Atlantic Agricultural Market, who meet on the Félix Lorne square in Sainte-Marie. This association brings together farmers who sell their products directly. Success is such that people come from far away to buy the market garden products (taro, yam, cucumber, lettuce…), fruits, peppers, and spices of these producers. Word of advice: get there early!

On the heights of Lorraine, the Ragald family has been growing manioc for five generations. They are proud to pass on this ancestral know-how. Here, everything is done in the most traditional way in the world: cassava is planted, cultivated, uprooted and worked to transform it into flour. Different stages follow one another: the tubers are grated and peeled to extract the pulp, before being cooked in large wood-fired stoves. Ten minutes later, the famous cassava, the Caribbean galette, is ready to be eaten.

On the 30-hectare site, which is farmed organically, a multitude of fruit trees grow to supply the 2,000 tons of fruit processed each year in this factory founded in 1908 by Baron Pierre Daniel Jullien de Saumery. You can come and visit (with prior reservation) the factory taken over by Royal and which now favors local distribution to understand the transformation process of the fruits, of which the pulp is then incorporated into juices and jams. The visit ends with product tasting.

The former Hardy distillery in Tartane is now home to an artisanal roasting facility, where a wide variety of coffees from the Caribbean and Martinique are roasted to perfection. On site, you can watch your future coffee being roasted live. The list of coffees is impressive: Cuba, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Honduras, Colombia, certified organic coffee from Guatemala, the amazing and unique natural decaffeinated coffee from Nicaragua and coffee from Martinique. Before you leave, you can buy the coffee of your choice in the workshop's store.

Michel La Rougery, the owner of the premises, is the first organic banana producer on the island. Michel's choice of organic bananas has been a long time coming: his father was a conventional farmer and when Michel took over the family farm, it was a long struggle to produce a healthy banana without pesticides. His farm covers more than 37 hectares of land which has been Ecocert certified since 2014 with certified chlordecone-free soils. In addition to bananas (dessert or yellow), he produces mangoes, avocados, chilli peppers and many other vegetable crops.

At Délice Spiritain, the specialty of the house is the pièce montée! There is one for every taste, of every size and for every event. As for the other traditional cakes, they can be enjoyed endlessly: pastry, mousses, éclairs, choux buns, religieuses, mille-feuilles, maréchal, amours-cachées, robinsons, large coconut cakes… And, at lunchtime, cold or hot sandwiches and various salads are also available. In short, a temple of treats where you can take refuge at any time of the day.

Want to eat healthy? Committed to a respectful approach of nature, Elodie cultivates multiple products in Le François according to the principles of agro-ecology and permaculture: fruit trees, market garden and aromatic plants, vanilla… There are also laying hens and sheep. The farm welcomes you in the countryside, in an environment surrounded by generous nature and a river. Every Friday, Elodie prepares baskets that she delivers from Schoelcher to La Trinité, with her healthy and certified organic products.

Jordan and Sara, united in life, combined their shared passion by creating a private chef catering service in 2018, when they returned home. Equipped with a solid professional background in gastronomy, their adventure continues by imagining artisanal preserves, composed of local products from short circuits only: thus was born the brand la Conserverie Créole. The recipes are preservative- and additive-free. We love the artisanal terrines, the giraumon ketchup... Discover them in their on-site boutique or order online.

This is the story of the rebirth of Habitation Beauséjour, a listed site since 1996, whose origins date back to 1671. The Habitation Chambert, consisting of a sugar mill and a cattle mill, was founded on the north side of the island. Over the years, the owners of this sugar mill changed names several times. It wasn't until 1900 that it was christened Beauséjour, under the impetus of its new owner, Amédée Alexis Augustin Knight. With him, the farm expanded by buying out the plots of land of the adjoining houses. He also converted the old sugar mill into a distillery and created the HBS brand. On his death in 1916, the estate was sold to the de Lucy de Fossarieu family, who continued to raise the quality of HBS rums to such an extent that they were awarded a gold medal at the 1931 International Colonial Exhibition in Paris. After the Second World War, banana cultivation began to supplant cane, and the distillery ceased operations in the late 1950s... until 2016, when Jean-Louis de Lucy and his son Arthur decided to relaunch the adventure of Martinique's oldest distillery. Renovation work took place in 2019, and in January 2020 the first HBS white rum was born! From the outset, the quality is top-notch: it's the result of a highly artisanal process (the canes are hand-cut, which limits oxidation, and harvested throughout the year according to maturity), and confirms the choice to distill in copper stills, which brings more roundness and smoothness. It exacerbates the aromas of HBS rum, whose canes also benefit from very rich volcanic soil, thanks to their proximity to Mount Pelée. All that remained was the choice of container. It was Arthur, a fervent Tintin fan, who came up with the idea of taking inspiration from the bottle in The Secret of the Unicorn. Since 2020, the distillery has set itself apart with its upmarket positioning: unlike most of its sister distilleries, which can only harvest cane from February to June, HBS harvests and distills all year round, resulting in the marketing of small, confidential cuvées (500 to 1,500 bottles per cuvée) several times a year in white and aged (with or without finishing in former cognac or whisky casks...). A visit to this traditional distillery, where you'll be greeted by Brice, our passionate cellar master, is well worth the detour!

Have you heard of QV Tropicales? These 100% made-in-Martinique natural sparkling beverages are made from local fruits: Cythère plum, pineapple, maracudja... From harvesting to processing, right through to bottling, each stage of production is carried out on the island. The result is a sparkling, low-alcohol drink (4.5%), with lovely local fruit notes, made from freshly squeezed fruit juices. A non-alcoholic version, with a shorter fermentation time, is also available.