At the end of the 17th century, the famous Father Labat, a Jesuit to whom we owe the proliferation of sugar cultivation in the French West Indies, was the parish priest of Macouba and operated a sugar refinery in his house along the Roche river. Antoine Leroux-Préville bought the domain from Père Labat in 1790 and gave the plantation the name we know it today, Fonds-Préville. In 1845, the daughters of Antoine Leroux-Préville sold the property to Jean-Marie Martin, merchant from Saint-Pierre and husband of Marie Ferment, daughter of a great planter from the island. Jean-Marie Martin recognizes the superior quality of the sugar cane he finds on the Fonds-Préville estate and decides to cultivate the sugar cane correctly only for the production of Rhum Agricole. He built a small distillery on the estate and put his initials "JM" on the first oak barrels used to ripen and transport his rum to the market. Since then, these two letters have become and remain the emblem of the most prestigious and superior rum known in Martinique.

In 1914, Gustave Crassous de Médeuil, already owner of Maison Bellevue, bought Habitation Fonds-Préville. From that day, Maison Bellevue and Fonds-Préville become a single entity. Located at the foot of the Montagne Pelée volcano, the Fonds-Préville Distillery remains Martinique's most famous rum factory. Today, the heirs of the Crassous family of Médeuil continue to manufacture the most superior rum in the world respecting the tradition and the promise to always produce an artisanal agricultural rum, from the sugar cane of the adjacent plantations of Bellevue and of Fonds-Préville.