While historically significant, Saint James Rhum Paille, bottled at 40% ABV, is a simple and light rum with honey, apple, and grassy notes. It performs better in cocktails than neat and is somewhat underwhelming as a representation of the brand.

While Mount Gay in Barbados often claims the title as the oldest commercial distillery in the world, Saint James may have been one of the first rum brands. The exact history is spotty, but the Saint James website mentions that the brand name was “registered” on the 21st of August, 1882, and Modern Caribbean Rum contains an ad for the original label with the caption “Among the first branded rum bottles, Saint-James, 1885”. Interestingly, it was a ban on the sale of colonial spirits in France that pushed early Martinican rum to be sold to the English speaking North American colonies, and take on the very English sounding name “Saint James”.

While much of the early stuff made it to North America, I found it surprisingly hard to find Saint James in North America in 2024. Their two month old Rhum Paille expression, bottled at 40% ABV, was the only bottle that made it into our big Martinique Rhum lineup. For better or worse, it falls to Rhum Paille to speak for (allegedly) the world’s oldest rum brand.

We measured a density of 0.946g/cc and a refractive index of 1.3548, indicating no additives, and in line with the requirements for the Martinique Rhum Agricole AOC.

The first note that hits the nose is honey; there’s a little bit of chalkiness to it, and bit of apple and vanilla follow that up. On the palate it’s quite thin; it’s 40% ABV definitely isn’t helping here. The apple and honey continue from the nose, and it give a sort of nondescript agricole freshness. The finish is pretty light and short, and lends itself to the fresh, grassy impression left on the palate.

In our blind taste test we thought it was just okay as a neat sipper (6.5/10) but much better mixed into a daiquiri (8.0/10). So how does it do carrying the mantle of Saint James? I was a little bit surprised to see how low it currently scores on RumX (6.0/10 as of writing—though that’s with only 15 reviews, and two outliers that scored under 3) but I understand what it has going against it; it’s bottled at 40% ABV, generally not rum nerds preference, and at 2 months of age, it’s a bit curious why it was put on oak at all. I think it provides a reasonable example of the category, and it doesn’t have any egregious faults. But I also think it’s a bit of a shame it’s made to carry the burden that it does representing the whole Saint James brand in my market.

 

The Superficial: The bottle is both very standard looking, and also very Saint James. The label is nothing to write home about, but there are a couple of glass details that I find quite nice. The metal screw cap is not winning any awards, but is unsurprising given this expressions place in the market.