TRADITION & INNOVATION

Dick Barba had been distilling rum for some of the world's biggest brands for a decade when he began dreaming of starting his own distillery: a place where he could create premium craft rum to be proud of.

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His distilling career had taken him around the world, immersing him in the best traditions of producing spirits, from Rum and Tequila to American Whisky and  Scotch. While living in Panama, he realized he was in the perfect place to apply all of his beverage expertise to create the world-class rum that he had always wanted.

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Inspired by Scotch whiskies, he decided that his rum would be distilled in copper stills. Then, he began testing molasses, the by-product of sugar manufacturing used by most rums in the world. However, he quickly learned that molasses would not achieve the quality he was looking for, and he decided to experiment with artisanal sugarcane syrup from the Chiriquí region. The laboratory results impressed him so much that the next day he got in his car and traveled 600 km to meet the syrup producer and talk business.

 

He bought his first copper still and decided that the obvious place to build the small pilot distillery was surely in the heart of the cane fields in the highlands of Chiriquí. The first distillates produced were so well-received, especially amongst consumers and the Panama City bartender community, that it became very clear to him that he had created a very special liquid.