You have Caribbean roots, grew up in France, and chose Vietnam to create your rum. Where do you feel most at home today? Has your idea of home changed over the years?
I think my understanding of home has evolved considerably over the years. Growing up in France with Caribbean roots, I already had this connection to different cultures, different histories and different ways of seeing the world. Moving to Vietnam added another dimension to that identity.
Today, Vietnam is where I've built my life, my family and something that started as a rather improbable dream: creating a rum distillery in a country without an established tradition of producing this kind of rum.
Over time, I've come to believe that home isn't necessarily the place where you were born, or even the place you come from. It's the place where you build something meaningful, where you create memories and where the people you love are.
I don't think I belong exclusively to one country anymore. I carry pieces of several places within me. And perhaps that's what home means to me today: not having to choose between them.
You once mentioned losing 600 bottles of rum because of a mistake. Was there ever a moment when you seriously considered giving up? What made you keep going?
When you start something from nothing, especially in a country where nobody has really established the path before you, mistakes can be extremely expensive.
Losing the equivalent of 600 bottles wasn't just a financial loss. It represented months of work, raw materials, energy and expectations disappearing because something went wrong.
Building Belami has required much more than learning how to make rum. I've had to understand fermentation, distillation, ageing in a tropical climate, business, regulations and the realities of producing something independently in Vietnam.
There have certainly been moments of frustration and exhaustion. But I think there's a fundamental difference between failing at something and being a failure.
I'm also an artist, and perhaps that influences the way I see things. When a painting doesn't work, you don't necessarily abandon painting. You learn to look at what went wrong, change your approach and begin again.
Rum is similar in that sense. You need discipline, patience and a certain amount of stubbornness.
What keeps me going is the belief that what we're creating has its own identity. I'm not trying to reproduce a Caribbean rum in Vietnam. I'm trying to express Vietnam through rum. And that story still has so much left to tell.
You personally seal and sometimes sign bottles of Belami. Why is it important to you to put your own hands into the process?
Because I never wanted Belami to become something disconnected from the person who created it.
We live in a world where almost everything can be automated, outsourced or reproduced on an industrial scale. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, but I think something precious can disappear along the way: the human connection with the object.
As a painter, I've always appreciated the relationship between the artist and the work. A signature isn't just a name. It's a way of taking responsibility for what you've created.
When I seal or sign a bottle, it's a small gesture, but it reminds me that behind every bottle there are years of experimentation, failures, decisions and patience.
I also like the idea that someone, perhaps thousands of kilometres away, will eventually open a bottle that passed through my hands.
For me, craftsmanship isn't simply a production method. It's a relationship between the creator, the object and the person who will experience it.
And I hope to preserve that relationship for as long as possible.