Bally’‘s history began with the foundation in 1774 of the Lajus Habitation, a sugar refinery in Carbet, Martinique. In 1917, the French engineer Jacques Bally bought the premises and updated the distillery’‘s equipment. It developed international renown under his direction. In 1987, it was moved to Simon, and then to Saint James in 1996. The brand is currently owned by the La Martiniquaise group.

Le Shrub is a rum liqueur made with orange peels. This version produced in Martinique by Bally for Velier was aged in cask for 18 months. Velier was founded in Genoa by Casimir Chaix in 1947. It was originally a small, family-run business specializing in the import and distribution of wine and spirits. Luca Gargano, a former representative for Saint James and serious rum collector and enthusiast, bought the business in 1986 and began bottling whisky first in 1992 and then rum in 1996. It was in 1996 that Gargano bottled his first Demerara rums. In 2004, Gargano was invited to Guyana to select casks by his friend Yesu Persaud, then the CEO of Demerara Distillers Limited (DDL). This partnership ended in 2015 when Persaud retired, but the rums bottled in the meantime became legendary. The same can be said for the Caroni casks he bought in 2005, two years after the distillery closed, following a visit to Trinidad with Fredi Marcarini the previous year to take photos. These two lines of bottlings built the renown of Velier, today also known for its work in other parts of the Caribbean, such as Barbados, Jamaica, Haiti and Marie-Galante. Rums selected by Velier are only ever aged in a tropical climate, which explains both their concentration and the high angels’’ share. They are generally bottled at cask strength or just below. Finally, Gargano has, for several years, fought for stricter classification of rum, even proposing his own model, which has since been adopted by several of Velier’’s partners.