Singer Melky Jean launches new rum brand, pours Haitian American legacy into each bottle

Miami Herald

16-05-2025

'Do you drink rum? Do you have a moment?'
Melky Jean, the Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter and younger sister of multi-talented hip-hop icon Wyclef Jean, steps up to her in-home bar, pulls some of the most popular Caribbean and Latin American rum brands from the shelf, displays them on the counter and begins pouring.
'Ready for the next one?' she asks before taking out a final bottle, shaped like a sailing ship.
For months, Jean has been hosting private tastings inside her North Broward home, hoping to get feedback and reactions as she introduces guests to her latest endeavor, one where she's blending her Haitian roots and American upbringing into a passion project aimed at both 'making people smile' and telling a story.
As she pours from the bottle, she waits to see the reaction.
'I always said that if I wasn't in the entertainment business, I would have been a bartender. Why? Because I like to see people smile,' Jean said, explaining her draw to rum, whose origin date back to the 17th century in the cane fields of the Caribbean. 'I love to make drinks, but I also love to see people have a good time.'
For the past 10 years, Jean has been crafting her own spirit brand and this month she debuted her Saint Sauveur 1972 Haitian Heritage Rum at the Miami Grand Prix. The month also marks Haitian Heritage Cultural Month, and she will feature the rum at the GIRLfriends In Business women entrepreneurial event hosted by L'Union Suite in West Palm Beach on May 31. She also recently landed her first deal with a restaurant to feature the spirit, Espanola Cigar & Lounge on South Beach.
With her trademark smile, the artist whose background includes branding and marketing alongside her husband Supreme, stresses, 'I'm really about the spirit life, and it's as if I took that and put it in a bottle. I feel like it's really in our rum.'
Saint Sauveur, Jean insists, is not your ordinary rum. It's a deeply personal project rooted in her own family history, Haitian culture and pride and her deep desire to tell a Haitian American story.
It's a story about three generations of Haitian women, whose images have been combined to create the rum's label; and it's a story about a first generation Haitian American with each foot planted in two different cultures.
'I remember Americans making fun of me, because even though I was technically American, my whole culture and everything about me is Haitian. Then I remember when I was with the Haitians, they would make fun of me. I never completely fitted in,' she said. 'So what is my story?'
'Is there not a place for me? Are there not more people like me out there who don't fit into one particular box?,' Jean wondered. 'We deserve our space on the platform. We deserve our space on the bar, right next to Barbancourt, right next to [Venezuela's] Diplomático. There is enough room for all of us.'
'This is serendipitous'
Jean says she has been hands-on with every aspect of Saint Sauveur.
'From the minute you first experience my rum, it comes from what you smell first,' she said. 'You'll get the hints of the coconut. You'll get the hints of the vanilla. There's one or two little secrets that I put in there, and I'm not telling anybody, so that they don't bite, you know? The smell of my rum alone is different than any other rums you'll smell.'
There is both a two-year ($37.99) and four-year aged ($49.99) rum. The first comes across smooth and feminine, and the second offers a hair-raising kick and masculine vibe.
Then there's the packaging and name, which are also 'intentional.'
In between sips during her tasting, she asks about the Mayflower, the 17th century ship that brought English settlers to North America and established the first permanent European settlement.
'What would its equivalent be in a Haitian American context?' Jean asks.
READ MORE: France forced Haiti to pay for independence. 200 years later, should there be restitution?
In coming up with a name, Jean said she wanted to tell a story, but not just any story; one of the Haitian American experience in America.
'The story of the Saint Sauveur actually stuck with me,' she said.
A 56-foot wooden sailboat, the Saint Sauveur brought the first documented group of Haitian refugees to South Florida after making landfall 40 miles north of Miami in Pompano Beach on Dec. 12, 1972.
Jean stumbled on the story in a Miami Herald article while researching for the name of the first boat that brought Haitians to America. But it wasn't just the sailing ship's name that struck a chord with her. The year of the ship's arrival, is the same year that her mother, Solage, immigrated to the United States.
'I was like, 'This is serendipitous,' ' Jean said, adding that the bottling was a measured choice. 'I wanted that when my bottle sat on a shelf, it told the story.'
Tribute to three generations of Haitian women
Though Jean and her four siblings grew up in a strict conservative household with their pastor father, the Rev. Gesner Jean, their mother —like many Haitian women— made kremas, the traditional Haitian alcoholic beverage that's similar to eggnog but with no eggs and includes spices and often overproof white Haitian rum known as kléren.
Her mother, Solage, made the drink in order to sell and have her own disposable income, Jean said. And even though she is allergic to alcohol and couldn't taste her own creation, the family matriarch had her own recipe.
Jean's maternal grandmother Edalie was a rum maker and used to distill her own kléren, which is made with fermented sugarcane and often referred to as Haitian moonshine due to its raw and rustic production in shacks throughout rural Haiti.
'Honestly, I feel like I was able to capture the essence of grandma, the essence of mommy and the essence of Melky in a bottle in Saint Sauveur,' said Jean, who also runs her own organization, Carma Foundation, focused on improving the lives of women and children. 'And so I was very intentional, even with the labeling. I wanted it to be reflective of my mother and grandmother.
'Three generations of Haitian women. I wanted to be able to tell a story, not only my story, but my mom and my grandmother, who had 10 kids,' she said.
Her brother Wyclef Jean, who wore a branded Saint Sauveur T-shirt during a special live performance with Lauryn Hill at Mana in Wynwood during the Miami Grand Prix earlier this month, said it's 'amazing to see my sister owning what once belonged to us.'
His younger sister looking to their family's legacy to create opportunity is a source of pride. 'At the end of the day, you don't have to look any further than your culture,' he said.
'What I am hoping is for there to be a domino effect where more women in our culture build more businesses and understand the pride of Haitian culture and what they have in their hands,' added the rapper.
Haitian rums growing in popularity
Jean's passion project comes at a moment when Haitian liquor is finding its footing among consumers.
Kerby Jacques Altidor, a collector of Haitian rums, said there is growing interest in the product including for kléren. Altidor said new brands are now popping up in top South Florida restaurants and at rum bars where business owners and patrons are also asking for 'their story.'
'People are going crazy for Haitian rum and they want to be educated about it,' said Altidor, who hosts his own rum tastings to introduce people to various brands. 'There is a confusion of what Haitian rum is, and what makes it distinct. There is also a lot of misinformation, like what kléren is and what is Haitian rum.'
Kléren, Altidor insists is not moonshine as it is often described because of its homespun, rustic production. But there are brands of the overproof spirit with high quality production processes joining the more established Haitian brands like Rhum Barbancourt, which has now won over 57 medals..
Altidor, who is hosting his annual Konbit Bwason event on May 24 at IPC Art Space in Little Haiti and will feature Haiti-based kléren distiller, Tonty Jean-Jacques and his Clarin Lakay, has yet to taste Jean's rum. But her brand is part of an emerging market of boutique rums being created by members of the Haitian diaspora, he said, that are finding their way to the shelves of high-end establishments.
Jean knew that if she got into this space, she wanted to control the narrative. She partnered with a female-owned distillery in Chicago, a city founded by a Haitian, to produce her rum, which is available for purchase online at SaintSauveur1972.com.
'I realized that being a woman, I wanted to have my own brand, but it was also one of the first times in my life that I was going to be able to tell my story,' she said.
So far, Jean has received inquiries from various distributors including one in Amsterdam. But she and her husband recognize that the rum market is crowded. Still, while a rum like Barbancourt is well known, Jean stresses, 'I'm creating a rum for my generation, and I'm creating a rum that is a Haitian American story.'