A Philadelphia entrepreneur has taken her great-grandmother’s legacy of making moonshine and created her own rum company.
Sofia Deleon, of El Merkury restaurants, just launched Tenango Rum earlier this year. Born and raised in Guatamala City before coming to the United States in 2012, Deleon always heard stories about her great-grandmother in the 1920s. “My tatarabuela used to make cusha, which is a Guatamalan version of moonshine that’s made with corn and sugarcane,” Deleon says. “I thought it was very inspiring, and it led me to follow in her footsteps.”
So Deleon says she decided that for her next entrepreneurial venture, she decided to investigate rum. “Growing up in Guatamala, I saw a disconnect between how Americans see rum and how the rest of the world sees rum,” Deleon says. “Most Americans associate with super sweet, hangover-prone tiki drinks that come with an umbrella that they’re most likely drinking on vacation.”
But rum, she says, can be so much, much more. “I want to reshape that perception of rum,” Deleon says.
Tenango is a 100 percent, single source rum, and it is crafted at a Guatamalan distillery. Made with grade A molasses on a column still using a traditional, Spanish method, it is aged in American white oak barrels.
The depth of the flavor, she says, distinguishes it from other rums, but its packaging is also distinctive.
“When I went back home and embarked on this rum journey, I wanted my product to extend beyond a great liquid,” Deleon says. “My larger goal was to give back and represent Guatemala in the best way.”
“To me, nothing says Guatemala more than the colorful weavings found all over the country so I thought ‘How can I best incorporate them in my bottle?’” she adds.
This question led Deleon to create a co-op of Mayan women, who handcraft each cover of every bottle. “It’s one thing to see a tag saying ‘made by hand,’ but to see it woven in a foot loom is something really magical,” she says. “The first time I witnessed the process in-person, I decided I wanted to do everything possible to keep this art alive through my product.”
Deleon was connected to one of the women through her father, who lives in Guatemala. “He managed to build the trust that was needed to allow this project to succeed,” she says.
Deleon then worked with a local designer known for working with traditional tejidos or Guatemalan fabric. “We must have gone through dozens of iterations until we got it to finally fit the bottle,” she says.
Deleon says she enjoys Tenango neat, especially if she’s relaxing after work, but she enjoys it in cocktails. “If I’m at a restaurant, I love to try the different ways bartenders come up with spirit-forward recipes,” she says. “One of my favorites is the Carajillo for dessert because the coffee notes go hand in hand with those from the rum.”
Tenango, which costs $49.99 per bottle, is currently distributed in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and Deleon has hopes for future expansion. “Similar to El Merkury, I created Tenango in the hopes of better representing Guatemala, an amazing country that has so much to offer, yet often gets a bad reputation in the media,” she says.