Jean Baptiste Spirits is a rebirth of the craft of Cajun rum distilling, practiced by many generations of our ancestors in Louisiana. Our first ancestor to make rum in Louisiana was our 7th-great-grandfather Jean-Baptiste Honoré d'Estréhan de Beaupré. In the 1750s, Jean-Baptiste had three agricultural estates in New Orleans producing tafia and cane syrup from sugarcane. Later our great-grandmother, Clémence LaSalle Fremin, a widower, made rum during Prohibition to support her seventeen children in the Cajun town of St. Martinville, LA. She made her cherished Cajun rum until the mid-1960s when her great-grandson Tim Westcott, was born. Today he continues the rum legacy with his son Brennan Westcott.
Jean Baptiste Spirits is a family-owned distillery in St. Martin Parish (county) between St. Martinville and Broussard, LA. The area of South Louisiana we are situated in is often referred to as "Cajun Country" or "Sugarcane Country." It has a subtropical climate with long, hot, humid summers and short, mild winters, the perfect environment for aging rum.
Our 18,000 sq/ft distillery utilizes a hybrid pot still to make our small batch rums in-house. All fermenting, distilling, aging, blending, and bottling occur entirely on-site.
About 8 miles from our distillery is the Louisiana Sugar Cane Co-op (LASUCA) sugar mill. It is situated along the banks of the historic Bayou Teche, about 2.9 miles north of St. Martinville. The same bayou where our Cajun ancestors first settled almost 250 years ago after their exile from the colony of Acadia in Canada.
As a farmer-owned co-op, this sugar mill benefits the local farmers, who all are part-owners and take extreme pride in the operation.
