Cane crushing equipment and smaller fermentation plastic tanks
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Distillery #4: Distillery Avatea
This distillery produces houses the crushing machinery, fermentation tanks and stills for Avatea and more importantly for the Mana’o brand.
They produce rum from both sugarcane juice (locally sourced from islands, see Mana’o post above from Taha’a and majority of the produce) and molasses (imported and lesser in volume). Rhum gets distilled here, aged in Rangiroa and bottled at Braserrie du Pacifique in Tahiti.
Fermentation yeast is different based on type of rhum, saw the “conventional” and “biological” varieties. My guess is Avatea gets the conventional yeast and Mana’o brand gets the biological yeast.
Yield from the still is at 89% ABV (definitely burnt my windpipe, but could still taste some flavors in it). Key rhums under Mana’o produced here: Blanc (multiple blanc rhums)and Paille.
The rhum is proofed down 1% per day to avoid losing flavor (I believe this referred to hydrolysis if done very quickly).
Genuinely amazing people. Lady who spoke to me in English was very helpful and Max (who spoke French which my wife translated very kindly) the distillery manager, was gracious enough to let me taste all their rhums and carry back a bottle of their 3 year cognac cask aged (53% ABV) rhum and did not accept any payment.
Big big thanks to @BenGthmnn for connecting me to the distillery which allowed to me to visit this amazing place.
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