Guadeloupe

The GI specification dates royal support for sugar in Guadeloupe from about 1645, on plantation sugar works using know-how brought by settlers, some from Brazil; like Martinique's, its history does not mention the enslaved people who did the work. Sugar and rum were shipped to France, where rum was blended in Bordeaux, Nantes and La Rochelle. Steam engines and distilling columns arrived in the mid-nineteenth century.

In 1922 France capped duty-free sales of Guadeloupe rum and set analytical criteria; production was then two-thirds sugar-factory rum and one-third rhum agricole, a proportion the specification says still holds. GI rums must reach 40 % vol. and 225 g of volatile substances per hectolitre of pure alcohol; vieux is aged at least three years in oak casks under 650 litres.