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Like every market Sunday, Ginette Rio stands behind her stall, set up under the closed shutters of Le Select. In front of her, a selection of her many punches—more than a hundred—are displayed on the table. She greets customers with a broad smile while passersby call out, “Congratulations, Ginette!”
Indeed, last week at the Salon de l’Agriculture in Paris, three of Ginette Rio’s punches were awarded medals. The Punchs Gigi won gold (scrubb punch), silver (passionfruit punch), and bronze (mango punch).
“My son Lucky called me from Paris to tell me the news,” says Ginette, still amazed. “I was so happy. I didn’t have high hopes, so it was a wonderful surprise. Especially the gold medal for the scrubb punch—because it’s coconut that made my reputation. But in the cold, coconut doesn’t hold up well!” She was just as surprised by the awards for passionfruit and mango. But, as Ginette laughs, “All my punches are good!”
Love at First Sight
It all began in 1972. At least for the story that links Ginette Rio and rum. Gigi” was born in Colombier in 1946. In 1972, I was working in the hotel business,” she says, ”and I thought I had to do something. That's when I started making coconut punch. But I didn't sell it, that's just the way it was. Around the same time, Ginette met Max Rio. He'd arrived from Saint-Brieuc, in the Côtes-d'Armor region, to work in the hotel business in Saint-Barth,” she recalls. It was love at first sight! At the time, my boss at Village Saint-Jean was Roger Lacour. When I left, I was expecting my first child. And Roger left at the same time as me because he was getting married.
From her union with Max, Ginette would have three children. “But I lost one,” she sighs before resuming her narrative. I worked for myself,” she explains. I had a grocery store, then my bar in Anse des Cayes, and my restaurant in 1978. I sold my rums and then cocktails I'd created. The “Barracuda” I'd made for the rugby team, the “Glissade” because an American who worked with me had told me it looked like a glissade, the “Lagon bleu”, the “Neige rose”, etc. The cocktails were for the club. Cocktails were for the evening, and during the day people would have their ti-punch for aperitif before eating.” Unfortunately, the restaurant literally went up in flames in 2009. “Who didn't know about Chez Ginette?” says the smiling medallist.
The adventure could have ended there, but Ginette Rio has a great sense of continuity. As I ran out of space to make my rums, I rented a room in Corossol for thirteen years,” she explains. Then it was sold at auction. Now I have my own little store at home in Corossol. Every day, she cuts her fruit, puts it in the rum and places the bottles in the sun. “That way, at the end of the day, you can already taste them,” she smiles.
For the succession, Ginette is counting on her son, Lucky. He's working to take over. My daughter Eve doesn't want to,” she says. She was brought up in this business, there were always people in my house, so she wants to do something else, that's normal.” And then there are her three little girls, whom Ginette speaks of with pride. Nevertheless, it's undoubtedly her children and granddaughters who have been feeling the pride over the past week, knowing that their mother and grandmother has been rewarded for her efforts.
