- So when you think of rum, you'll always think
of pirates or beach.
Rum always have that connotation or that reputation.
We want to push the needle further.
You know how people enjoy single malt?
It has that sipping culture— that's what we hope
to build for rum.
With Luisita Rum, we want to show the consumer
that it can be enjoyed as a sipper as well,
not just in cocktails but as a sipper.
- Hi! I'm John Go. I work with an importing
and distribution company called Grand Cru.
So our purpose is to make more niche
and boutique brands available locally.
I think Filipinos drink so much rum
because it's a very accessible spirit.
Like, we're a tropical country.
It's easy for sugarcane to grow in a tropical country.
We have Tanduay which is, I think,
one of the biggest rum producers in the world.
So the different brands of rum you can find here
in the Philippines are Clairin, Flor de Caña,
Doorly's, Tanduay, and of course, Luisita Rum.
For me, what makes a good rum is it has to have texture
and flavor.
- In Tarlic City, Philippines, the first and only
single estate rum in the country has been crafted
from soil to bottles since 2016.
Inspired by a deep fascination with wine,
father and son duo, Nando and Paco,
have been meticulously creating Luisita Rum with the vision
of producing a premium, farm-centric wine of the tropics.
- They know what it's all about.
- I believe so. Yeah. We have explained.
Cheers, pop.
Wow. The ----- stuff is really good.
- Oh, wow. It's really good.
- Yeah. I haven't tried this one in a while
but it's delicious.
Of course, the bird.
- This is the bird I was telling them.
- Philippine hawk-eagle.
- Yeah. 2136.
- What's important with the brand is that we really stick
to the core value.
So we're trying to make a spirit that you can really
be proud of, something that's done
in the classic, traditional way of making
a world-class spirit,
and there are certain things you cannot compromise on
and you have to stick to that.
- The three most popular ways to make rum
is the Spanish style, the English style,
and the French style.
The most familiar style we have here is Spanish style.
Luisita is different from other rums made
in the Philippines because, one, they're single estate,
so all of the molasses they use all come from the sugarcane
in their land which gives them more quality control
with the raw material and also gives a higher chance
to expressing terroir.
So it's essentially grass to glass.
- Luisita actually was founded in 1881—the estate.
It was founded, at that time, the Philippines, our country,
was a colony of Spain.
So it was put up by a company called Tabacalera.
So Tabacalera was involved at that time,
they were the biggest tobacco traders in the world.
So the original plan of that company
was to plant tobacco here in Luisita,
but they found that the climate was not suitable
for tobacco farming.
So around... some time in the early, well,
the third of the century, early 1900s,
they shifted to, okay, let's start planting sugarcane.
So in 1927, our family, we had no stake here in Luisita.
My paternal great grandfather, actually he and his siblings,
they had a sugar mill further up north
called Paniqui Sugar Mill.
So it closed down already some time in the 90s,
and they actually had a rum at that time.
And this rum was being sold and really prevalent
in the market after the war.
Looking at the history as I started, like,
asking stories from relatives and looking at history books,
I slowly realized that rum making
is actually, not in our blood, but we've been doing it
for a long time without us even knowing.
So here we have what we call a sandy loam.
Actually, they called it Luisita soil,
they gave it its own designation.
And this kind of soil, it's easily workable,
high in organic matter.
When you have good soil, everything else follows.
So the philosophy is always just focus
on the ground.
So with sugarcane farming, and any farming really,
you have to be very observant, take care of the soil,
and that is actually 99% of the battle.
***- Yung pagtatanim namin, yearly nagiimprove yan eh, di lang nagtatanim kami ng tubo pati yung soil inaalagaan namin yan. Kailangan may crop rotation or kaya maglagay ka ng organic matter para yung fertility babalik, dahil naging acidic na yung lupa. Kung di maganda yung lupa mo, pangit din yung production mo dahil di lalaki yung sugarcane.
- Once you take care of the soil, the process
is setup seed beds,
so these would be nurseries where we grow specific varieties
that we pinpoint to specific soil type.
Sugarcane is actually not grown from seed
but we propagate it from the stalk itself.
There are eye buds in the sugarcane plant,
so sugarcane is actually a grass,
you plant it, and then it grows from these eye buds.
Come harvest time, we cut it by hand
in the first plant, and then we also use
mechanical harvesters now.
***- Kaya nga ang ginawa nila, lahat ng nauna dun, ikakarga nila tapos mamaya iaatras nila yung truck nila para yung mga nakakalat pa dun, ilalagay lahat dito sa truck, ikakarga lahat. Halimbawa kakargahin yan hanggang 10-15 or 19 tons, ayan. Pero yung nakakarga nila ngayon wala pa sa 19 tons yan. Magtatabas sila ulit. Pagkatapos magloading yan, dadalhin na sa central. Pagkatapos pupunta na sa ticket booth at for milling na nila yun. - Ang unang nameet ko si boss Paco nung nagtanim tayo sa bahay kubo, naghahakot ka pa eh, nagfefeeders ka pa, tapos yung malalaking bato inaalis mo pa sa bahay kubo. Diba nandun ka rin? - Oo nagtabas din. - Nagtabas din ako. Kaya alam na alam ko yung trabahong yan. - Dinatnan ko sa may Hacienda Bantug, nagtabas kayo dun sir kasama si Boss Juan. Umakyat sila ditong ganun. - 47 trucks. - Oo yun. - 2015. - Naexperience niya rin tong ginagawa ng mga ito. Hinakot niya, sa ladder umakyat ganun.
- Actually, I wanted to be a lawyer.
***So growing up, grade school pa lang, my father is a lawyer so I was like, okay, I want to be a lawyer.
And I tried it out, spent three months
in his law firm in his little cubicle...
And I'll be honest, I didn't have fun.
So I talked to him and I said, "Okay.
I don't think this is for me."
He sent me here.
"Okay. Try it out in Tarlac."
I thought I was going to be a farm manager right away,
you know?
Like, okay. Top position, here we go.
And apparently, my first job was to cut sugarcane.
I don't know if it was planned, that maybe he wanted me
to have the hardest job so that I'd go back and say,
"Okay. I'll be a lawyer."
Maybe it backfired.
Probably did.
I fell in love with it and I still really remember that.
So I look back on that now.
At that time, it didn't make sense to me.
It's a difficult job.
But now that I look back on it, it gives me confidence
in myself that, okay, I really love this,
'cause I wouldn't have done that, I wouldn't have...
and I'd do it again.
And it reminds me that I'm passionate about it.
When I cut that cane in 2014, 2015,
I didn't go home, I never left this place.
So I've been here for 10 years now.
Almost 11, actually.
So here in Luisita in Central Luzon,
we actually have the biggest fleet
of mechanical harvesters and we're really pushing
to mechanize the industry,
at least for sugarcane which is what we're involved in.
The reason being so that the labor now can transfer
to jobs that cannot be mechanized.
So it's really bringing them to where the human touch
is required.
Once that cane is harvested, it's now sent here to the mill
and it's dumped.
So we have a special technology, we lift the truck up
and the special technology is called gravity.
The cane falls down from the truck.
***-Ito pala yung tinatawag naming mill processing ng kung paano iayos yung truck namin para bago idump sa mill. Bale ginagawa po is dalawang area yan, para di madelay yung pagpoprocess yung pagtutumba ng truck, pagkayari ng isa, yung isa naman, para yung pagdudump ng truck tuloy tuloy, walang delay. Bale pantay na siya, di tulad ng unang dumping, magulo yung pagkakadump niya. Pero pag dumaan na siya ng equalizer, magiging pantay na, magiging ayos na. Tapos pagkayari nun, dadaan ng mill, dun na pipigain yung mga chips na galing sa crushing tapos yung juice niya ilalabas niya, pipigain na doon. Yang mga truck na yan nanggagaling ng iba't ibang lugar, may Victoria, may Nueva Ecija, meron din sa Pangasinan, meron din sa Gerona. May iba't Ibang lugar din pong pinanggagalingan.
- So once that cane is dumped, it goes through a series of,
they call it a Unigrator.
To keep it simple, it's a lot of cane knives crushing it.
Inside the mill, you can just imagine
it's a sugarcane juicer but in a large scale.
The cane is really now squeezed,
we extract as much juice as we can,
and that juice now gets sent to the boiling house.
It's heated up, we evaporate as much water
as we can, really to concentrate the sugar content
in the sugarcane juice.
But inside the mill, that cane juice now goes
to the boiling house and whatever's left over,
'cause 78% of that sugarcane stalk
is actually fiber,
and that fiber is now really crushed
and we send that now to the boiler.
And in the boiler, it's burnt and that generates steam,
that steam is now sent to our turbine generators
to generate power.
So everything you need for sugarcane factories
and the sugar industry is almost, there I say,
carbon neutral because the energy required
to process the sugarcane and the sugar is also in the plant.
So that part is...
I'm always amazed by that.
We call it bagasse—that fiber.
It's now burnt, and then, of course,
people now think, "Oh, you're throwing pollutants
into the atmosphere."
So what we did, again, going back to taking care
of the soil is we put a, they call it a scrubber,
so it's just water jets that shoot into the chute,
the chimney, and now all the particulates fall
to the ground and it's called mill ash
which is very high in potassium and other trace elements—
molybdenum, all of that good stuff.
That mill ash now we apply it back into the field.
So again, it's a closed loop system.
So that's what happens with the fiber.
The juice, which is now in the boiling house,
once it hits the clarity that's needed,
the bricks that's required, we send that now
to the evaporators where more water is evaporated.
***- This is the pan floor station. So ito yung evaporation station, so dito inaalis yung tubig. We concentrate the juice from 30 brix to 65 brix. So after boiling sa taas, after 24 hours of curing time, ito na yung C sugar. Sineseparate ito ng ating continuous centrifugal basket. Ito yung ating C sugar, and then yung molasses naman nito is the final molasses. This is the final molasses na naextract dito sa boiling house, and then ito yung isesend sa distillery for fermentation to product the alcohol. - So mola