Written and photographed by CARRIE DOW
THE Y GRASS IS GREENER FOR PUERTO RICO’S SAN JUAN ARTISAN DISTILLERS
A family business looks to rum’s future after a tumultuous decade.
ou could say the father and son team who make rum at Puerto Rico’s San Juan Artisan Distillers are really in the grass-growing business. You can see it when visiting the distillery in Vega Alta, an agricultural area outside the capital of San Juan. The distillery, flanked on three sides by seven bucolic acres, grows bright green blades taller than people. In fact, the father, Pepe Alvarez, has been in the grass business for decades, starting his own sod company right out of college after working as a landscaper in his teens. He mainly grew sod for construction firms that needed landscaping for the corporate buildings going up during Puerto Rico’s business boom in the 1990s and 2000s. Then an economic disaster sprouted weeds, so to speak. As Pepe’s son and distillery Vice President Jose Alvarez explained, “[During] the Great Recession construction fell so the sod business completely collapsed. [My father] wanted to reinvent himself so he started traveling … He started to learn about rhum agricole — the French-Caribbean style of rum made from sugar cane juice — by traveling to Martinique. He fell in love with the estate
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