- So when you think of rum, 
you'll always think

of pirates or beach.

Rum has always had 
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 Tarlac 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, right?

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.

- Our farming improves every year.

We don’t just plant sugarcane; 
we also take care of the soil.

Crop rotation is necessary, 
or adding organic matter

to restore fertility 
because the soil

has become acidic.

If your soil isn’t good, 
your production

won’t be good either 
since the sugarcane won’t grow well.

- 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.

- What they do is load everything 
onto the truck first,

then later, they reverse it 
to pick up the scattered ones

and load them as well.

For example, they can load up 
to 10, 15, or even 19 tons.

But right now, 
they haven’t reached 19 tons yet.

They’ll harvest more.

Once loading is done, 
they transport it

to the central mill.

After that, they go 
to the ticket booth,

and it’s ready for milling.

- The first time I met Boss Paco 
was when we planted

at the nipa hut.

You were hauling, feeding, 
and even removing big stones

from the hut.

You were there too, right?

- Yeah, I was cutting as well.

- Me too. That’s why I know 
this job very well.

- I saw you cutting 
at Hacienda Bantug, sir,

with Boss Juan. 
They climbed up there.

- 47 trucks.

- Yeah, that’s it.

- 2015.

- He also experienced 
what they’re doing now.

He hauled, climbed the ladder—
everything.

- Actually, I wanted
to be a lawyer.

So growing up, 
even in grade school,

my father was a lawyer, 
so I thought, 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.

- This is what we call 
mill processing—

how we position our trucks 
before dumping them into the mill.

There are two areas 
to prevent delays in processing.

As soon as one truck finishes, 
the next one follows,

keeping the dumping process 
continuous.

The sugarcane gets leveled—
unlike before,

when dumping was uneven.

But once it passes 
through the equalizer,

it gets properly aligned.

Then, it goes through the mill, 
where the crushed sugarcane

is squeezed, extracting its juice.

These trucks come 
from different places—

Victoria, Nueva Ecija, 
Pangasinan, and Gerona.

Various locations supply us.

- 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.

This is the evaporation station, 
where we remove the water.

We concentrate the juice 
from 30 brix to 65 brix.

After boiling for 24 hours, 
it becomes C sugar.

The continuous centrifugal basket 
separates it.

This is our C sugar, 
and the remaining molasses

is the final molasses—

extracted here 
in the boiling house.

This final molasses is then sent 
to the distillery

for fermentation 
to produce alcohol.

- So molasses, 
locally we call it "pulot."

It's all the sugars 
that can no longer be crystallized.

- Here, we grow the sugar crystals 
from stage three

to pan numbers four and five.

We monitor their size 
and color until they reach

the final five-glass stage.

If we test them 
and no crystals stick

to the glass, 
it means they’re clean.

- 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.

- This is where we propagate yeast.

From just 12 liters of lab yeast, 
we expand it

to a large-scale volume 
of around 22,000 liters.

The small cultivator 
contains wort,

which is a combination 
of molasses—

a byproduct of sugar—
along with water, chlorine,

and other nutrients for yeast.

The molasses is sent here 
for processing.

The wort is aerated 
to further multiply the yeast.

- 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, aging is a big factor 
in rum production.

In the Philippines, 
because of our warm climate,

our aging process 
is faster compared

to colder countries 
where aging takes 10 to 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.

I started as a guest at this bar.

Then, after sharing a few drinks, 
it all started—

“Okay, let’s work together.” 
That’s how it happened.

I think a lot of things happen 
when people drink

and share stories, 
and maybe that’s

what happened here.

- Our menu offers a fun twist 
on classic signatures,

and we also create bespoke cocktails.

Here at Bar By, 
we use calamansi liqueur

and dalandan.

Our latest addition 
is Intramuros chocolate liqueur,

along with Luisita Rum 
and other local rums.

- We use a lot of local spirits 
and liquors.

One of them is Luisita Rum.

In fact, two of our bartenders 
visited the farm,

saw the entire process, 
and now they truly understand

their drinks.

- We highlight local ingredients, 
produce, and liquors—

products that can compete 
with international brands.

Right now, I’ll be making 
the River Valley—

a clarified cocktail 
using milk punch.

Most rums originate 
from tropical countries

like Barbados, the Caribbean, 
and Trinidad & Tobago.

Sugar is a basic necessity 
in the Philippines,

so we can say that 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.

I was born and raised here, 
and I’m still

in the sugarcane business.

I continue working here, 
and I’m proud that I was able

to send my children 
to school because of this.

I hope it lasts.

We teach the younger ones 
so that when we’re gone,

they can continue the work. 
That’s my dream.

- I was able to put my children 
through school.

I supported all of them 
through this hacienda.

As long as you’re happy 
with your job,

that’s what matters.

Even at 62, I’m still working here.

- Seeing the fruits of my labor 
in the market,

knowing that people 
are enjoying what we’ve created—

it’s fulfilling.

We started this project 
with the Cojuangcos

when it was still small.

Now, it’s growing, expanding, 
and I’m very proud

of what we’ve achieved.

My dream for Luisita Rum is 
for it to grow even further,

for all our projects to succeed,

and for it to be 
renowned worldwide—

not just in the Philippines.

- 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.

- It’s delighting to hear people say, 
“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.

And what I've learned now 
is that, you know,

the smile is enough.

My dad would smile.

It's already their way of saying 
that it's a product worthy

of their name, 
it's a product worthy

of carrying on the name 
of Luisita.