Gone are the days when sugar cane plantations blanketed much of the island of Puerto Rico, the port of San Juan sending sweeteners and spirits around the globe to the enrichment of its colonizers. However, rum is still big business on the island, now home to some of the world’s most well-known beverage brands.
Ron del Barrilito is the island’s oldest rum distillery, but it still doesn’t have the name recognition that larger brands do, at least outside of Puerto Rico. However, enthusiasts know that Ron del Barrilito has been crafting spirits using the exact same formulation its founders developed almost 150 years ago, and from the exact same spot in Bayamón.
In an age when generating the biggest buzz seems to be the only way to get ahead, Ron del Barrilito is quietly doubling down on its history. It’s a bet that feels, somehow, like the most daring of them all.
Ron del Barrilito, Through the Years
Ron del Barrilito’s Hacienda Santa Ana is just a fifteen-minute drive from the capital of Puerto Rico, truly a stone’s throw from the metropolitan area of San Juan. But when it was first bestowed to the Fernández family in 1787 by the Spanish crown, it felt much further. Back then, this was a sprawling two thousand acre plot, ripe with the sugarcane that held its destiny.
Ron del Barrilito got its start when Don Pedro Fernández, who had studied under cognac makers in Europe, returned to the island excited to tinker with the fruits of his family’s fields. “He used to carry around a little barrel of his latest creation under his arm for people to try,” explains José “Timmy” Ortega, one of Ron del Barrilito’s brand specialists and distillery guides.
In 1880, he settled on his masterpiece, the formulation still used for Ron del Barrilito’s Three Stars expression. From here, Ron del Barrilito takes both its name and its legacy, of creating small-batch, intentionally-crafted rum.
Ron del Barrilito has weathered 145 years of profound change, in the world and in its industry. Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory, meaning that Ron del Barrilito was forced to shutter its operations for 13 years during prohibition, even as the spirits industries on neighboring Caribbean islands flourished.
In more recent years, the technological changes and profit-focused pressures of a globalized industry have changed the spirits world many times over. But staying true to its roots, it seems, has all been part of Ron del Barrilito’s profound staying power.
Hacienda Santa Ana
To visit Hacienda Santa Ana is to witness firsthand how Ron del Barrilito has married past and present so seamlessly. On a recent visit to Puerto Rico, I stuck around for the full experience, starting with a historical tour through the storied hacienda house where the Fernández family once lived. It’s still packed with original furnishings, college diplomas, recipe books and awards for the brand’s then-nascent rum at the turn of the century—the previous century.
Here, too, is Ron del Barrilito’s one and only distillery, which sits just beyond a 19th-century windmill once used to grind raw sugarcane. Hidden beneath the ground are cisterns that hold the rainwater collected for its formulations, now filtered before being fed into more modern machinery than the Fernández family could have foreseen years ago.
Amidst high-tech levers, dials, screens and the latest production gear are barrels that look like they’ve been around forever, and probably have been. To enter the distillery’s cavernous aging rooms is to be surrounded by the same oloroso sherry casks that Don Fernández once used. One barrel is dated to the same year I was born, and many are even older.
Ron del Barrilito’s union of old and new feels like a spectacular feat, especially considering how easy it is to exchange years of history for the stainless, sanitized, and dare I say soulless convenience of the modern. But this is not the brand’s way, and their commitment to their history has served them well, as evidenced by their continued growth and innovation over their nearly 150 year history.
It’s All in the Mix
It’s a union palpable in the product and in the full brand experience at the visitors center, too. Rocking chairs and family photos set off what is plenty of space for a party; this summer, Ron del Barrilito has offered complimentary salsa classes on the weekends for visitors, just in time for the island’s surge in tourism thanks in large part to the Bad Bunny’s 30-concert residency. Mixology classes make everything from the island classic piña colada, first created at San Juan’s Caribe Hilton, to newer takes on the daiquirí and a rum-based old fashioned.
At the bar, a drink menu meets the trends and goes beyond: an espresso martini made with aged rum, an island-style take on a Moscow mule. Still, one of the most popular experiences here is tasting a full flight featuring all of Ron del Barrilito’s expressions, from the original Three Stars expression first produced in 1880 to the limited-edition Five Stars, aged up to 35 years. First made available in 2018, Ron del Barrilito Five Stars is available to purchase at $750 a bottle; as I can personally attest, it is worth every penny.
Heritage Commitment
At the end of a Ron del Barrilito distillery tour is a big surprise for visitors: a mythical barrel of rum called La Doña—the old lady—casked in 1952, a time of political upheaval for the island. Edmundo Fernández ordered the barrel to be sealed until the day that Puerto Rico gained its independence. Then and only then would it be opened, taken into the main square in Bayamón, made free for all in celebration of Puerto Rico.
It’s a story powerful enough to give even the casual observer chills, but Ortega says it has caused grown adults to burst into tears, many times over. To visitors and to the brand itself, La Doña is a reminder: Ron del Barrilito is more than just another type of rum. It’s a commitment to a craft, a process, and a people, developed hand and hand with the island itself.