Our QuickBooks Champion for this month comes from the beautiful islands of the Seychelles in the form of the Trois Frères Distillery.  This family-run business has been in operation for the past 13 years and is made up of a father and sons team of Robert Doffay and his sons, Richard and Bernard.  Literally meaning Three Brothers, the distillery is the only one in the Seychelles and makes Takamaka Bay Rum, which is sold locally on the islands as well as being exported through the Dubai Duty Free as well as into Europe and especially Germany.  The company has plans to bring Takamaka Rum to South Africa very soon.
Takamaka Rum is derived from the sugars in sugar cane. The sugar cane is carefully chosen for its juice and sugar content from selected regions on the island of Mahe. The sugar cane is supplied through a cooperative of sugar cane growers who take great care in ensuring that the cane is wholly organic in cultivation. The island of Mahé provides distinctive “terroir” notes unique to its granitic soil nature.

Once the sugar cane arrives at the distillery it is crushed as soon as possible to ensure the best return of juice. The cane is run through the crusher which gives a 95 percent yield of juice. The extracted juice is green in colour, which comes from the cane bark and is known as “vesou”.  This is then fermented and distilled.

Rums produced at the Takamaka Bay distillery are further enhanced through the processes of ageing and blending. The ageing process imparts a new set of flavour characteristics to the rum spirit as well as providing the distinctive amber colour. Ageing will also tend to smooth out the spirit depending on how long the rum spends in the barrel.
Currently they age in new American oak barrels with a medium toast (toasting or charring of barrels varies from light to heavy toasting with increasing degrees of toasting giving increasing degrees of colour to the spirit).

To all of their spirits they add very pure water sourced from the mountains. Seychelles is known for its high quality mineral water and this contributes to the overall quality of the rum.  Trois Frères Distillery is committed to respectfully preserving and promoting the historical and cultural aspects of La Plaine St. André, which it calls home.

After starting the business using other accounting software, it soon became clear that additional functionality was required and they started using QuickBooks about 7 years ago.  When Robert was asked what the benefits of using QuickBooks have been, he commented, “The transition to QuickBooks was an easy one, it is so easy to understand and one doesn’t require a background in accounting to use it.  QuickBooks is far better suited to our business than our previous software and is running well.  Even though we set it up remotely in the Seychelles, there were no problems with the set up at all”.

For more information on the Trois Frere Distillery or on Takamaka Rum, please visit: Distillery