- 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 molasses, locally we call it "pulot."
It's all the sugars that can no longer be crystallized.
***- Dito namin pinapalaki yung mga grano na galing ng tres papunta rito sa pan number 4 and number 5. Dito namin tinitignan yung laki ng grano, yung kwan ng kulay niya, at hanggang sa mayari dun 5 glass. So pag ginanito namin dito, pag wala siyang sumama sa glass, malinis na siya.
- Okay. So the final step or the second check that we have
for the molasses quality would be in the quality
of our raw sugar or our brown sugar.
So by flavor, by taste, I can tell if it's too sweet,
my molasses quality is not that good.
If there's a little bit of bitterness,
a little bit of molasses flavor, sugarcane flavor,
then it's great for distillation.
So right now, this sugar, when you taste it,
based on the taste alone...
No, not yet. It's not just like alcohol
but it's not overly sweet, so you don't want it
to be too sweet.
That means that there's still enough sugar in the molasses
that when we ferment it, we're going to be able
to hit the desired flavor profile for our rum distillate.
So the sugar is now sent to the warehouse for repacking
and you know, to supply the sugar in the market.
But the important part here when we got into making
the rum distillate is the aroma that you smell
when you taste the unaged rum before it hits the barrel.
This is what we look for, this smell, this aroma,
this brown sugar, almost like a crème brûlée
kind of essence.
And then, that's what tell us, okay, this distillate
is good for rum.
Yeah. This reaches the supermarket,
and then some of it we send to become white sugar,
depending on the market.
But this is our contribution to Philippine agriculture.
We focused on fermentation because in fermentation,
that is where alcohol and flavors are made.
***- Dito po sa lugar na to, dito po namin pinaparami yung yeast. So from lab yeast which is around 12 liters lang, macoconvert siya into large scale na yeast around 22,000 liters. So dito sa small cultivator may laman siyang worth. Yung worth, yun po ay combination ng molasses which is the byproduct of sugar. So dito po samin napupunta yung molasses. Worth, combination siya ng molasses, water, chlorine and other nutrients for yeast. So bale ina-aerate lang siya para dumami pa.
- So after this fermentation, we got to distillation.
So the yeast, the little animals which are friends,
they consume the residual sugars in the molasses
and turn that into what we know as alcohol,
but in our case, rum distillate.
So rum distillate is rum that has not seen
the inside of a barrel.
It doesn't have an age yet,
but there's already flavor there.
Once fermentation is done, we send it to this 98-year-old.
It was put up in 1926/1927.
Distillery.
So it's a twin column distillation process
designed specifically for rum, or for spirits.
The inside of that is all copper.
We have about 70 copper plates and bubble caps.
I don't want to get too technical.
But basically, to make good rum distillate,
you want the inside of your column still to be copper.
Here you'll see, we call it column no. 3.
So it's our oldest column.
So whatever was in fermentation gets fed first
into the beer still.
And then from the beer still, it goes to the rectifying column.
So the rectifying column is where we get...
we now collect our unaged rum—
so the rum distillate.
In simple terms, the way I like to view it,
I'm playing hide-and-seek to find the flavor.
So if you will notice, there are a lot of tapping points.
So we put a tapping point in each part
of the rectifying column.
So as we go on, every hour we're tasting,
and we find where the good alcohol is.
So it's hide-and-seek.
So sometimes we might get it here,
sometimes we might get it here,
most times we get it here.
So again, it's a sensory experience.
You smell it.
And to make the decision,
it's just like food, if it tastes good, collect,
if you don't like how it tastes, divert it.
After distillation, it's coming off the still
at 95% or even 93% alcohol, that's not...
you can drink it but actually, no,
you cannot drink it, do not drink it.
So that's already rum distillate.
That's already considered rum.
What you do now, what we do is we get that
and we now send that to our blending facility
where we slowly drop the proof or the alcohol percent
to about 62-65% ABV or alcohol by volume.
And once that's done, once you hit the target ABV,
that's what we now put into the barrel.
At least as far as aging is concerned in the bodega,
we find here in Luisita that it should,
given the climate, it takes about two years
to reach the profile that we are looking for.
Now, our oldest batch is eight years already actually.
So once it's in that barrel, the rum distillate
is interacting with the wood, all of that lignin layers
and you really just let time do its thing,
let nature do its thing, and all of these chemical compounds,
alcohol, esters, congeners, they now form inside the barrel
and the taste develops even further.
***- Yes. Malaking factor yung pagaage ng rum. Dito kasi sa Philippines mainit ang climate natin so mas mabilis mag-age yung ine-age nating alcohol compared sa abroad na medyo malamig yung area nila so matagal yung aging nila kaya inaabot ng 10-15 years.
- One good thing that came out of the pandemic
is all the barrels that you see here,
we tasted it and we scored it.
We scored it on a rating of one to five.
So this is called the barrel thief,
but this is the real barrel thief.
(chuckles)
So this is our way of testing the barrel
and rum that is inside.
So we make it a point to taste at least...
maximum 30 barrels in one day,
and then we score it one to five based on flavor,
aroma, and then style.
So style would be how close it is to the flavor
or the profile of Luisita Rum that we are looking for.
- How old is that?
- So this one would be...
This is about five years. Yeah.
So you guys asked a while ago what is my favorite way
of drinking Luisita Rum, it's like this,
straight from the barrel, neat.
So this is 65%.
- So Bar By is an architectural firm by day,
and then a cocktail bar at night.
So after working, you can drink.
***Nagsimula ako as a guest dito sa bar, and then ayun nakakainuman ko sila and then dun na nagsimula, oh sige work na tayo ganun. Ganun lang naman. I think a lot of things happen kapag umiinom at nagsheshare ng stories so baka ganun, that's what happened. - For our menu, it's a fun twist of the signature classic, and we also do bespoke creations. And dito sa Bar By gumagamit kami ng calamansi liqueur or dalandan. And yung latest namin is Intramuros chocolate liqueur. And also yun Luisita Rum and other local rums. - We use a lot of local spirits and liquor. One of the local spirits that we use are Luisita Rum. In fact, two of our bartenders nakapunta na sa farm nila and then they get to see the process of doing it. They know their drinks. - We offer our local ingredients, local produce na local liquors, mga liqueurs na kayang lumaban dun sa international brands. So yung gagawin ko ngayon is River Valley. So it's a clarified cocktail. So gumagamit kami ng milk punch. So most of the rums kasi nanggaling sa mga tropical countries, so ayun Barbados, mga Caribbean, Trinidad and Tobago. Ang sugarcane kasi... Sugar is a basic necessity sa Philippines so masasabi natin na we have the raw materials to make rum.
- With Luisita Rum, we always want to keep
that sense of place.
So we're not going to release a product
that we feel is... will not be worthy
of the name Luisita Rum.
It has to be something we're proud of.
People always ask me that, and it's sort of a crossroad,
"Are you going to go mass market?"
"Are you going to go full production?"
"You want to be in every shelf of the world?"
Of course, a part of you will say yes,
but if I do that and I lose the quality,
that's not the dream for Luisita Rum
because like I said, we want to show the world
that we're capable of producing a really world-class
premium spirit that just tastes really good
and it hits that quality that we're looking for.
- I'm still kicking. Senior citizen.
I'm super senior.
***Dahil dito ko lumaki, dito ko pinanganak, hanggang ngayon nandito parin ako sa sugarcane business. Nagtatrabaho parin ako dito kaya I'm proud napagaral ko mga anak ko dahil dito lang. Sana magtagal yan. At yung mga bata sa amin, tinuturuan namin yan para pag wala na kami, sila ang susunod na magtatrabaho dito. Yan ang pangarap ko.
- Napatapos ko yung mga anak ko. Napatapos ko lahat dito sa hacienda. Basta masaya ka sa trabaho mo, okay lang. Ito okay din nagtatrabaho ako kahit 62 years old na ako, nandito parin ako. - Nakikita ko yung pinaghirapan ko sa market na iniinom ng mga tao at tuwang tuwa sa iniinom nila. Kasi inumpisahan namin tong project ng mga Cojuanco nung maliit pa. Eh ngayon lumalago eh, lumalaki kaya I'm very proud na naachieve namin ito. Ang pangarap ko sa project na to, Luisita Rum, ay sana lalo pang lalago at magciclick lahat ng projects na ginagawa namin, marenown sa buong mundo di lang sa Pilipinas.
- So the potential for Filipino rum worldwide
is good because in other parts of the world,
rum is becoming more popular.
Historically, most of the rum come from the Caribbean,
but with the rising trend of rum, other parts of the world,
mostly Asia, they're making more rum.
I think Luisita is a good indicator that the Philippines
can have more craft rum brands in the future.
***- Nakakatuwa when I hear that they're like, wow, we're not just planting sugarcane anymore, we're planting rum. It's nice to hear because now you're value adding, of course, and it uplifts the community, it helps them. Make the most of it and the dream is that the brand really outlives me. The driving factor really there would be to create something that, you know, 100 years from now, 200 years from now, it's still there, Luisita Rum is still there.