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Rhum Barbancourt is a national tradition, surviving the tumult of the last century and a half. Whether it is weddings or holidays, or raising voodoo spirits, no other will do.

When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt arrived here in 1934 to mark the end of America’s occupation of Haiti, he insisted on toasting the hand-over with local Barbancourt rum. Two decades later, the visiting Vice President Nixon personally mixed a Barbancourt rum collins for Haiti’s president (who was, ahem, a whiskey drinker).