Distillerie Dillon owes its name to Count Arthur Dillon, general and hero of the American Revolutionary War. He married a cousin of Joséphine de Beauharnais, Laure Girardin de Montgérald, owner of the house which, through this marriage, became the Dillon house. Elected deputy for Martinique in 1789, he was accused of conspiracy by Robespierre and beheaded in April 1794.
In 1857, Habitation Dillon was bought by the mayor of Saint Pierre, Pierre Hervé, who restored the canal and the dyke, and built a sugar mill, a guildery and railroads. But the sugar crisis of 1866 ruined it and the plantation became a public limited company managed by Louis Domergue.
In 1891, a cyclone devastated the 18th century dwelling and led to the death of Louis Domergue. In 1900, his son Raoul rebuilt it from a house in Saint-Pierre which he had dismantled beam by beam, thus saving it from disaster.
But in 1919, one of the administrators had to comply with the quota policy and ended up transforming, in 1928, the distillery into a sugar factory. Managed by the de Laguarigue family, Habitation Dillon did not start making agricultural rum again until 1954.
It was bought in 1967 by the Bordeaux family company Bardinet: in more than twenty years, the Bardinet Group will quadruple its annual production by investing in fermentation tanks, distillation columns and an aging cellar with a capacity of three thousand barrels.
Since 1981, Dillon rum has been regularly awarded at the Concours Général Agricole, thus confirming its qualitative and commercial progress both on the Martinican and Guyanese markets as well as in mainland France, where it holds first place. Having become the property of the company La Martiniquaise in 1993, the Dillon brand continues to contribute to the influence of the Controlled Designation of Origin (A.O.C. in French for Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée) Martinique, obtained in 1996.
Today the Dillon distillery produces both rums and punches. During the visit, a slide show will allow you to see and understand the production and the different stages of production of agricultural rum, then a tasting will be offered.
