LUISITA RUM FOR DELIVERY 2

- 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.