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In this June 16, 2017 photo, Ronalson Chery, 26, eats rice and beans he brought from home as he takes a lunch break from moving sugar cane to the machine that extracts the juice at the Ti Jean distillery, which produces clairin, a sugar-based alcoholic drink, in Leogane, Haiti. Haiti's most famous export is Barbancourt, a delicately flavored, carefully aged rum that's considered among the best in the world. Then there's its rustic cousin clairin, a drink that's much cheaper and relatively rare outside this struggling Caribbean country. Clairin, or kleren as it's known in Haitian Creole, is less refined than rum and typically not aged, though some artisanal varieties are subjected to an aging process to give them a more mellow and distinctive flavor. It's produced at hundreds of small distilleries scattered across Haiti. At one of them, Ti Jean, in the coastal town of Leogane west of the capital, men with their heads covered to ward off the tropical sun use machetes to cut down the towering sugar cane stalks that surround the distillery. They feed the cane into a grinder to produce the juice that is the raw material of both clairin and the type of rum associated with the French Caribbean. Most rum produced elsewhere is made from molasses. The juice that flows out the other side is a murky caramel color, though the finished product will be as clear as vodka. The clairin is fermented and filtered and then shipped in plastic jugs for sale in market stalls and by street merchants. Individual retailers add flavors with herbs or fruit. (Photo by Dieu Nalio Chery/AP Photo)
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