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Within the city of Vega Alta, on the northern coast of Puerto Rico, sugarcane grows the best way it might need 200 years in the past. These are the grounds of San Juan Artisan Distillers, based in 2011, which has kick-started a brand new part in Puerto Rico’s sugar and rum historical past. The distillery is positioned roughly two miles from the ruins of the previous San Vicente Central sugar mill, which was based in 1873 and closed in 1967. Till San Juan Artisan Distillers got here round, that was the story of sugar on the archipelago: a historic curiosity that left the panorama dotted with deserted mills, rusted over in the course of overgrown fields. However founder Pepé Álvarez had a imaginative and prescient to create a rum that may honor Puerto Rico’s sugarcane rising heritage and problem the molasses-based rums that dominate the island.
At its peak in 1952, Puerto Rico’s sugar trade produced 12.5 million tons of sugar at 34 mills and 7 refineries. The trade skilled speedy deterioration when sugar manufacturing took a again seat to the industrialization venture of Operation Bootstrap in 1947, which eradicated all company taxes for 10 years to encourage funding by U.S. trade. The intention then was to maneuver Puerto Rico away from its agrarian system and towards a producing economic system. Between 1951 and 1968, 17 crops ceased operations. In 2000, the final two crops shuttered, however rum distillation by no means resulted in Puerto Rico.
The truth is, in the USA, greater than 20 million gallons of rum consumed per yr is produced in Puerto Rico. The large, well-known rum distilleries, Bacardí and Don Q, are traditional dry-style, light-bodied easy rums distilled from imported molasses, the sourcing of which, throughout industrialization, turned cheaper than producing sugar. The previous distillery exports 6.7 million 9-liter instances to the U.S. yearly, and the latter is essentially the most consumed domestically. They’ve confronted little or no competitors within the market. Now, nonetheless, increasingly small producers are rising, together with San Juan Artisan Distillers, whose bottlings stand out for being made out of domestically grown sugarcane juice.
When Alvarez, who spent most of his life working in landscaping and farming, determined to get into the rum enterprise in 2008 and launch the distillery, his analysis started with searching for out sugarcane. The cultivation of cane and the manufacturing of sugar has been an integral a part of the Puerto Rican economic system and nationwide id for the reason that sixteenth century. Christopher Columbus introduced the sugarcane plant on his second voyage. Whereas it was first planted within the Americas in Hispaniola, the island recognized as we speak because the Dominican Republic and Haiti, it was later cultivated in Puerto Rico, Jamaica and Cuba.
On the lookout for sugarcane to plant in his distillery, Alvarez discovered of a reserve of the crop saved by Puerto Rico’s Division of Agriculture. Within the Nineteen Sixties and ’70s, the federal government had got down to create and enhance sugarcane varieties to yield extra juice, have much less fiber and have softer bark for extra environment friendly manufacturing. However sugar manufacturing yielded to industrialization, and the venture was deserted. Alvarez planted 5 varieties.
As we speak, San Juan Artisan Distillers is the one producer on the island that distills from their very own sugarcane, whose tall stalks encompass the distillery. The rum made there’s a far cry from the molasses-based fashion typical in Puerto Rico, and is extra akin to rhum agricole, which is distilled from sugarcane juice. Its expression has extra grassy, funky components reflective of the land the place it’s grown.
Due to his agricultural background, Alvarez’s resolution to function an property distillery wasn’t an enormous stretch. “I used to be 55 years previous and I felt too younger to retire,” he says. He traveled to agricole distilleries across the French Caribbean to be taught extra about manufacturing. “I assumed it may very well be one thing attention-grabbing to ascertain in Puerto Rico.”
First, Alvarez bought a brand-new German column nonetheless, which he makes use of to distill the model’s lighter rums. He additionally acquired pink pot stills and different gear—initially used for Cognac—from the Moët Hennessy home, which had lately closed an artisanal rum distillery in Trinidad. For some expressions, Alvarez blends rums from the 2 stills, whereas others are bottled individually. It took a yr and a half to assemble all of the gear.
“I paid and did all this by promoting my work, belongings that I had, as a result of no financial institution, nobody, trusted my venture of making my distillery,” he says. “However I used to be clear that I wished to have a distillery with its personal sugarcane. I’m cussed.”
Hurricane María in 2017 affected the tempo of the distillery’s opening and the launch of Ron Pepón, its first “ron agrícola” (“Pepón” means “Massive Pepe,” in honor of Alvarez’s father); his preliminary plantings have been destroyed by the storm. However the sugarcane grew again swiftly, permitting them to slowly fill their oak barrels.
Earlier than distillation, the cane is floor in a mill and comes out in items, frayed from urgent. The liquid juice it yields has a greenish hue, and in its first urgent, it collects in a container within the mill. Half is watery cane juice, and the opposite half is waste, which the distillery makes use of as compost to nourish the sugarcane subject. From there, the juice takes about 4 to 5 days to ferment earlier than it’s distilled. The rum ages for at the least 12 months in barrels earlier than bottling, as Puerto Rico legislation requires for merchandise to be labeled “Rum of Puerto Rico.” This job is carried out by Alvarez’s son, Jose R. Álvarez Lefranc, who’s a skilled engineer and manages the operations and administration of the distillery.
As we speak the Ron Pepón model has blanco and añejo expressions, the latter of which is aged for twenty-four to 36 months in used oak bourbon casks. The distillery additionally has a sequence of rums known as Tres Clavos, that are infused with native fruits like pineapple, ginger, ardour fruit and quenepa. In 2025, they plan so as to add a brand new product line of “ron agrícolas” that get a second six-month end, in both Cognac casks, sherry casks or barrels made out of amburana wooden.
Whereas it seemed like the tip of Puerto Rican sugar in the beginning of this century, San Juan Artisan Distillers has introduced it again from the useless, creating a brand new custom and a brand new fashion of rum alongside the best way. “Our product is exclusive in its variety: grown, harvested, fermented and distilled sugarcane juice from Puerto Rican heirloom varieties,” says Alvarez. “These varieties are from right here. They carry our land’s DNA. They’re our heritage.”
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