Planteray (formerly Plantation)
Maison Ferrand’s multi-island rum line, formerly branded as Plantation and rebranded as Planteray in 2024. Sources rums from across the Caribbean and finishes them in France, producing a wide range of cocktail-ready bottlings that have become standard at modern craft bars.
The French house that became a rum landlord.
Maison Ferrand is a French spirits company founded in 1989 as a Cognac producer, run by Alexandre Gabriel. In 1999, Gabriel launched a rum line under the brand name Plantation, sourcing aged rums from distilleries across the Caribbean—Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad, Guyana, and elsewhere—and finishing them in Cognac casks in France. The line grew rapidly through the 2000s and 2010s and became one of the most-served brands at modern craft cocktail bars.
In 2024, Maison Ferrand announced the rebranding of the line from Plantation to Planteray, citing the cultural baggage of the plantation name and its associations with the brutal history of Caribbean colonialism and enslavement. The rebrand was widely covered in the cocktail-industry press and was framed as part of a broader rum-industry reckoning with how to talk about Caribbean rum heritage without sanitizing the slavery-and-colonialism foundation it was built on.
The products
The lineup is large—the brand produces dozens of bottlings across price points and regional sources. The most important for exotic-cocktail work:
- Planteray Original Dark A multi-island blend, dark and full-bodied. The workhorse Plantation/Planteray dark rum for tropical builds.
- Planteray 3 Stars (white) A Cuban-style, lightly aged white rum blend. Useful as a Cuban-style substitute in cocktails calling for Cuban rum (which has been embargoed in the U.S. since 1962).
- Planteray Pineapple (Stiggins’ Fancy) A pineapple-infused white rum. Niche but useful for specific tropical builds.
- Planteray Xaymaca Special Dry A blended Jamaican rum. Less aggressive than Smith & Cross, more accessible price point.
- Planteray Barbados 5 Year, OFTD, Grande Réserve, various single-island and single-vintage bottlings A long tail of single-origin and aged expressions.
- Planteray OFTD A 69% ABV blended Demerara-style rum designed by a panel of bartenders and historians (David Wondrich among them). The acronym stands for Old Fashioned Traditional Dark. Useful as a 151 alternative or in heavy tropical builds.
Role in exotic cocktails
Planteray bottles serve as substitutes-and-supplements across the rum-vocabulary spectrum. The Original Dark is a widely-stocked dark rum option; the Xaymaca is a Jamaican option; the OFTD is an overproof option; the 3 Stars is a Cuban-style option. Few canonical exotic-cocktail recipes specify Plantation/Planteray by name, but the bottles are widely used as substitutes when canonical specifications are unavailable.
The rebrand from Plantation to Planteray matters editorially. Older recipes and references will say Plantation; newer ones will say Planteray; both refer to the same products with the same composition. The Forbidden Altar recipe pages should use the current name (Planteray) where the brand is referenced.
To go deeper
- Website planteray.com (formerly plantationrum.com, redirects to current site).
- Sourcing Widely available at U.S. liquor stores. Some specific bottlings are limited; the Original Dark, 3 Stars, and OFTD are the most consistently stocked.
- Related Vernacular entries Jamaican Rum, Demerara.
- Cultural note The 2024 Plantation-to-Planteray rebrand is a useful entry point into the broader rum-industry conversation about colonial heritage. Maison Ferrand has been more reflective about that history than most major rum producers; their public statements around the rebrand are worth reading.