In the late 17th century, the famous Pére Labat, the famous Jesuit priest credited with proliferating sugar cultivation in the French West Indies, was the parish priest of Macouba while he operated a sugar refinery at his house on the Roche River, where Rhum J.M comes from today. Antoine Leroux-Préville purchased Father Labat’s estate in 1790 and gave the plantation the name we know it by today, Habitation Fonds-Préville. In 1845, Antoine Leroux-Préville’s daughters sold the property to Jean-Marie Martin, a merchant from Saint-Pierre and husband of Marie Ferment who was the daughter of one of the island’s most famous sugar planters of the day. Jean-Marie Martin recognized the superior quality of the sugarcane he found on the Fonds-Préville estate and decided to shift the cultivation practices away from producing huge quanities of sugar... and to focus on growing sugarcane to create a yield of the finest quality on the island. He built a small distillery on the estate and branded his initials "J.M." on the first oak barrels used to mature his rum. Since then, these two letters have become and remain the emblem of the most prestigious and most superior rum known in Martinique.