The laboratory analyzed the contents of the adulterated drink and found that it contained nine times more methanol than allowed by international standards.
The company in question deployed personnel at the points of sale and resale where the violation was detected. There they discovered that the containers containing the precious liquor had been reused and tampered with, with the caps taped and wrapped with transparent tape.
These caps are visibly different from the distinctive gold plating on the neck of the original container, the company said in a statement published here.
“All Barbancourt products leave the distillery with a clearly visible, tamper-evident seal on the neck of the bottle,” emphasized the company’s director, Delphine Gardère.
The safety of our product and the health of consumers are our absolute priority, emphasized Gardère in the text.
Barbancourt rum is considered Haiti's most emblematic drink.
The spirit is promoted as a manufactured brand, one of the few that uses fresh sugar cane juice in its preparation, in addition to the double distillation usually reserved for the most exclusive cognacs.
In Haiti, Barbancourt is sacred; it is incorporated into cooking recipes, preparations for medicinal purposes and even voodoo ceremonies, the most widespread magical-religious practice from Africa in the country.
The drink's history dates back to 1862, when Dupré Barbancourt, former Consul General of Liberia in Haiti and originally from the Charente region of France, came to the Caribbean country and developed a recipe for rum using the Gallic method of double distillation.
A few years later, Ron Barbancourt won gold medals in Hamburg (1885), Paris (1889, 1898 and 1907) and London (1907).
In May 2023, the Haitian drink called Connoisseurs' Rum won another gold medal in the Beverage Testing Institute competition with its new concoction called Haitian Proof.
meme/joe