Diana Brandt
Nov 14, 2017
In case you missed it, Bruno Mars is the co-founder of a rum called SelvaRey Rum. In case you really missed out, he had a concert here last weekend and it was one of the best I've ever been too. If I could have, I would have flown out to LA and experienced it all over again this week. That man is a performer and made me love his music even more than I already did.
Enough about that though, I was at the concert because SelvaRey Rum invited me to come hang out. So let's talk a little bit about the rum. Where is the Rum made:
"SelvaRey Rum is produced in Panama. Panama City’s thriving banking sector has earned it the nickname “the Dubai of Central America”. Twenty-four hours a day, ships the size of small towns pass through the Panama Canal, one of the greatest triumphs in engineering history. And yet Panama’s Colonial heritage can still be found in the cobblestone streets that line the alleys between skyscrapers.15th century ruins rest amongst five-star hotels. However the real magic of Panama is created 4 hours outside of the city in the province of Herrera where SelvaRey’s distillery rises out from the fields of sugarcane."
What was the process like for finding the location and who would distill?
"We scoured the world to find a distiller who was up to the challenge of creating a white rum that was fine enough to drink on the rocks. In the space of two years we had samples made from California, Guyana, Jamaica, Mauritius, Peru, Mexico, Guatemala, Trinidad, and Amsterdam. Although we tried a lot of decent tasting rums, nothing fulfilled our mission.
THEN WE FOUND PANCHO.
Don “Pancho” Francisco Fernandez of Panama is arguably the most respected master blender in the world – the man behind many award-winning aged dark rums. However, he’d grown nostalgic for the great white rums of his youth. And like most geniuses he was an experimenter at heart who always had an eye toward the future. Coincidentally, he’d recently been dipping into his aging warehouse and had been playing around with roasted cacao infusions.
Don Pancho was born in Cuba in 1938. His first job was cutting sugarcane in the fields alongside his father. Don Pancho’s “golden nose” set him apart from all the other cañeros and he eventually worked his way up to became the Cuban Minister of Rum. He was settling into an enviable position as a member of the Cuban elite when he fell in love with a woman from Panama and decided to move and build his own distillery from scratch in a small town called Pesé in the Herrera Province– Panama’s premier sugarcane region. He bought a warehouse on the outskirts of Panama City and began stocking it with barrels of rum perfected by a lifetime of distilling."
There are two rums, the SelvaRey Cacao and the SelvaRey Rum. So what does it taste like:
"SelvaRey Cacao has a distinct flavor, Don Pancho hand selects a delicious five-year-old rum whose inherent flavor is brought out by the infusion of the finest locally sourced chocolate. The most elegant flavored rum around, this extraordinary spirit was bred to raise the bar.
SelvaRey White is a blend of three and five-year-old rums, distilled in 1922 copper column stills, aged in bourbon casks and carbon filtered to remove the color without losing the deep flavors imparted from the aging process. The 3-year-old rum brings youth and vibrancy which is then rounded off by the full-bodied richness of the mature 5-year-old. Unlike many white rums, SelvaRey has been crafted with the distinct goal of being fine enough to sip on the rocks."
Both are 24K Magic in our eyes!