What’s the Story with Ron del Barrilito?

Within the rum world, Puerto Rico’s Ron del Barrilito is among today’s most misunderstood or polarizing rums, depending on your perspective. While the brand has many fans, including me, the same three questions pop up whenever it’s discussed in enthusiast circles:

• Is it flavored rum filled with additives?

• Is the brand legitimate if they don’t distill it?

• Where does the distillate come from?

Here, I’m adding a fourth question: Is it Puerto Rico’s oldest rum distillery, as many social media posts and news stories claim?

I’ll address each of them below, then wrap up with an excerpt from Modern Caribbean Rum regarding the company’s production operations.

Before we begin, here are the players:

• Ron del Barrilito – the rum brand.

• Hacienda Santa Ana – The Puerto Rican estate where Ron del Barrilito is produced.

• Ron Hacienda Santa Ana – Another brand made at Hacienda Santa Ana.

• Edmundo B. Fernández – The parent company of the rum brands and estate.

Additives in Spirits – A Primer

Virtually all distilled spirits have a long history of “enhancing” their flavor via maceration with fruits and spices and the addition of sweet wines and tinctures. There are hundreds of old books with recipes for “improving” whiskey and brandy:

The secrets of the liquor merchant revealed - M.I. Fogelsonger, 1933

The secrets of the liquor merchant revealed - M.I. Fogelsonger, 1933

Rum is no exception. In his 1937 paper, Foreign and Domestic Rum, US Government agent Peter Valaer writes about Barbados rum:

…it consists of mixtures of molasses spirit which were originally distilled at approximately 185° to 190° proof and to which were added ingredients to produce desired types of flavors. The molasses spirits are usually distilled with lime and soda, often in the presence of vegetable roots, coconut shells, and other substances. … There is a tendency to remove as much as possible of the original character due to fermentation of cane products and substitute a new character with added ingredients. … a formula of well-known brands consists of a mixture of distilled molasses spirit varying in proof from 145° to 190°, sherry, Madeira or other wines, often spirits of niter, bitter almonds, and raisins.

Foreign and Domestic Rum - Peter Valaer, 1937

Clearly, today’s Barbados rum-making is a far cry from what Valaer described, but the passage highlights that additives in rum are not a modern phenomenon, nor are they limited to Spanish heritage producers.

Certain spirits, including bourbon and Scotch whisky, eventually adopted regulations forbidding the addition of anything other than caramel for coloring. Other spirits haven’t gone that route yet. While many rum producers make rums devoid of additives, the practice of using wines and macerations remains, particularly in the Spanish heritage domain. Producers disclosing all their additives is the ideal scenario, but within the rum category as a whole, not all additives are equally bad. Think “shades of gray,” not black or white. Caramel coloring is an additive, after all.

In the end, what ultimately matters is whether a given rum adheres to the regulations where it’s made and sold. If a spirit complies with all the rules to be called rum, it’s legally rum, even if not to our preferences. I prefer additive-free rums myself, but I also enjoy many rums where I’m fully aware that things like sweet wines are part of the flavor profile.

Barrilito’s Additives

In my interactions with Barrilito, they’ve been upfront about their process. To make Barrilito, the company starts with a very light cane spirit (~94% ABV), which they purchase.

Less than 2.5 percent of that distillate is then macerated with fruits and spices. The exact list is naturally a secret. Afterwards, the macerated rum is blended with the remaining 98% before aging.

Here’s the key point: Per US TTB regulations, rum can contain up to 2.5 percent by volume of “harmless coloring, flavoring, or blending materials.” Barrilito’s macerated rum fits this description, so per TTB’s rules, it’s legally rum, not flavored rum, spiced rum, or a spirit drink.

While this maceration may not be everyone’s cup of tea, many people are quite enthusiastic about it, and the brand has built a loyal fan base. From the brand’s perspective, they might say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Source Rum

Just as there’s a long history of additives in distilled spirits, so are producers that don’t distill. Such producers purchase unaged distillate, which they then age and/or blend before selling it under their brand name. In the whiskey world, such brands are referred to as Non-Distilling Producers (NDPs). For instance, Whistle Pig was an NDP until they started distilling in 2015.

In early twentieth-century Barbados, brands like Cockspur, Doorly’s, Alleyne Arthur, and R.L. Seale purchased unaged rum from the West Indies Rum Refinery, now known as the West Indies Rum Distillery. A few well-known rum NDPs today include Bermúdez and Matusalem (Dominican Republic), La Hechicera (Colombia), Karukera (Guadeloupe), and Trigo (Puerto Rico).

It’s often (incorrectly) assumed that Hacienda Santa Ana buys its unaged distillate from its island neighbor, Bacardi. While this may have been true in the past, it’s doesn’t appear to be the case today.

How do I know? Puerto Rico is a US territory, and publicly available US import data show Edmundo B. Fernández (Barrilito’s parent company) importing a large amount of rum from the Dominican Republic, as well as lesser amounts from Guatemala. Some of the Dominican Republic rum came from Alcoholes Finos Domincanos, while much more came from a company called Flexitank. However, Flexitank may be just an intermediary between the actual distiller and Edmundo B. Fernández. The Guatemalan rum came from Mag Alcoholes SA, a large Guatemalan agro-industrial producer. (See Modern Caribbean Rum for details on both these distilleries.)

To finalize one last detail regarding Bacardi, since 2017, Edmundo B. Fernández, Inc. has been owned by a Puerto Rican investor group led by Joaquín Bacardí III. Joaquín was previously the CEO of one of the Bacardi Corporation’s divisions. However, the Bacardi corporation and Edmundo B. Fernández, Inc. appear to be completely separate companies.

Is Ron del Barrilito Puerto Rico’s oldest rum distillery?

Many news stories and social media posts say that Ron del Barrilito is Puerto Rico’s oldest rum distillery, dating back to 1880 or 1871, depending on when you start counting. This predates Bacardi’s arrival in Puerto Rico in 1936.

However, Puerto Rico enacted local Prohibition in 1917, and the US as a whole in 1920. Hacienda Santa Ana didn’t distill during Prohibition and didn’t resume production when Prohibition ended in 1934. Thus, the company hasn’t distilled for over a century.

Now, you might ask, “What exactly constitutes a distillery?” Must distillation actually occur there? Or is just some aspect of rum production sufficient?

It doesn’t really matter here.

Destilería Serrallés, home of Don Q rum, was established in Puerto Rico in 1865. And unlike Hacienda Santa Ana, it resumed rum distillation after Prohibition ended. Thus, I contend it holds the title of Puerto Rico’s oldest rum distillery.

Ron del Barrilito may have specific criteria for declaring itself the oldest, but if so, I’m not aware of what they are.

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With all four topics addressed, I’ll wrap up with a relevant excerpt from Modern Caribbean Rum’s Puerto Rico chapter.

Modern Caribbean Rum Chapter Excerpt

When US Prohibition ended, Barrilito quickly registered its trademark and label with the US Patent Office and returned to rum making. However, distillation was no longer part of the operation. Instead, they worked with a distillery to recreate the flavor profile of the rum Barrilito once distilled.

The Fernández family continued to own Santa Ana and Barrilito for another seven decades while its fortunes waxed and waned. The two remaining Fernández family members, the brothers Manuel and Fernando, had no successors. After a year and a half of discussions with former Bacardi CEO Joaquin Bacardi III, the brothers entrusted Joaquin with Barrilito’s legacy. It was Juan’s commitment to continue the Fernández tradition and respect their production processes that sealed the deal.

Joaquin immediately made critical investments to expand operations and grow the Barrilito brand. An influx of USD 12 million was allocated for improvements, including a new visitor’s center, three new 25,000-gallon spirit tanks, 28,000 additional sherry butts from Spain, and a new warehouse to hold all those new casks.

Another element of the revamp was adding new Four Stars and Five Stars expressions to the company’s longstanding Two Stars and Three Stars lineup. Another addition is a 138-proof rum known as Ron Hacienda Santa Ana, which follows an abbreviated version of the Barrilito Two Stars process.

Hacienda Santa Ana Operations

Rum making at Hacienda Santa Ana is surprisingly compact. All essential operations, including aging, fit within a large square building with a courtyard recessed into one side.

Over the years, there has been some misunderstanding about Barrilito’s rum production process. These days, Barrilito is very transparent about how it produces rum, including the process of macerating small amounts of rum with fruit. While this draws gasps of “adulteration” from certain quarters, maceration has a long tradition in spirits making.

The keys to Barrilito’s flavor profile are twofold:

• Macerating a small percentage of each bottle’s rum with fruit

• Aging in ex-sherry casks

Barrilito purchases a custom-made light rum at between 94 and 94.5 percent ABV. While it’s not a heavy aguardiente, it’s in line with the light distillate that other Spanish heritage producers use in their blends.

Less than 2.5 percent of the rum Barrilito purchases un­dergoes maceration. Before maceration, the rum is diluted to around 65 percent ABV and placed into wooden tanks. Dried fruits and spices join the rum in the tank and macerate for around six months. However, this infused liquid is just one aspect of Barrilito’s flavor profile.

A closely guarded company secret is the exact set of fruits, spices, and nuts. Only two people know the exact ingredients. The first is Manual Fernández, Barrilito’s prior master blender and grandson of Pedro Fernández. The other is the current master blender, Cuban-born Luis Planas. Before coming to Barrilito, Planas was Bacardi’s Process Director and Global Rum Master Blender.

When it comes time to blend rum for aging, a large tank is filled with unaged, unmacerated rum diluted to fifty percent ABV. The water Barrilito uses for diluting rum before aging is filtered rainwater collected on the Hacienda Santa Ana grounds. A bit of the macerated rum then joins the unmacerated rum. The result is just a bit over fifty percent ABV and has less than 2.5 percent macerated rum, within US regula­tions for “blending materials.”

The exclusive use of ex–oloroso sherry butts for aging is an­other way Barrilito differs from mainstream rum producers. Each butt holds five hundred liters, about 250 percent of a bourbon barrel’s capacity. While Barrilito uses ex-sherry butts, they are not used as part of a solera.