- 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