A POPULAR Caribbean rum has been renamed after its original name was linked to slavery.
Maison Ferrand’s Plantation Rum will now be known as Planteray Rum.
The announcement was made by Maison Ferrand owner Alexandre Gabriel, at a press conference at the West Indies Rum Distillery in Barbados.
“From today forward, the evolution from Plantation to Planteray begins,” said Gabriel.
According to Gabriel, the new name “pays homage to sugarcane, the plant that gives birth to the rum, and the sun’s rays that are essential for sugarcane growth and ripening.”
Criticism
Heavy criticism of the brand’s name and it links to slavery was highlighted during the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 and in an article by Rachelle Ferron in the Guardian in 2022.
The name change was promised in June 2020, but trademarking the new name in multiple countries caused the delay, according to reports.
The brand’s new name Planteray will first appear on bottles of Cut & Dry Coconut Rum – which will be available to purchase outside of Barbados for the very first time.
For the companies other brand’s the name change is expected once existing stocks of custom bottles have run out.
“We understand the hurtful connotation the word ‘plantation’ can evoke to some people, especially in its association with much graver images and dark realities of the past,” said Gabriel, the rum’s creator and master blender, at the time.
“We look to grow in our understanding of these difficult issues and while we don’t currently have all the details of what our brand name evolution will involve, we want to let everyone know that we are working to make fitting changes.”
The brand has also confirmed and emphasised that its rum production process will not change.
Bottles with the Planteray Rum name will be distributed globally from this month.
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For 300, of the last 500 years of European history, the Caribbean islands were Europe’s profitable slave plantations; from which sugar, bananas, and Rum have become synonymous.
If everything associated with the Caribbean’s 300 years of European slavery is to be exercised, then many products, and place names will have to be renamed.
African-Caribbean people need to oppose these unwise, Marxist-inspired, Left-wing policies, which are designed to rewrite Caribbean history.
Politically Correctness is seeking to deny the facts of Caribbean history; and this must be opposed by all who believe history cannot be made “politically correct.”