Madrid, Hotel Silken Puerta de America,
it starts the II Internacional RUM Conference on thursday 6 of June 2013 at 6 p.m. It begins a two day’s festival where you can taste the caribbean’s distillate and a great variety of cocktails created with ron.
One of the first person i meet when i arrived was Javier Herrera ,the chairman of this manifestation. He was nervous may be for the uncertain weather because the festival was at the open air.
Until that moment the congress went well inside the luxurious hotel, with English & Spanish conferences. I began taking note and making photo of my emotions conveied by the first rum’s tasting while the hotel’s garden was becoming full of people with a nice soundtrack in the air.
There were important and big brands like Botran, Bacardi, Santa Teresa, Flor de Cana, Diplomatico and Clement with small companies like Veroes from Venezuela and Don Papa from Philippines who immediatly caught my curiosity.
During my first “serious” tasting, speaking a little spanish & english because nobody spoke italian!, i knew Isabel Medina, the Brand Ambassador of Ron Botran.
Botran is an amazing Guatemala’s Ron which as two different versions: Solera 1893 & Reserva. Isabel explaned me the steps of their production and suddenly Lorena Vasquez the Master Blender of this Ron and of the most famous Zacapa 23 came next to me. Mrs Vasquez answered to my questions in a helpful and courteous way satisfing my doubts about the topic.
The tasting continued and in the few metres which divided the stands you could have the possibility to compare differents custom and traditions to make ron as: Portorico (DonQ), Colombia (Medellin), Costa Rica (Centenario), Nicaragua (Flor de Cana), Venezuela (Diplomatico,Ocumarè, Roble, Veroes) and many others delicious rum.
The two days of festival spent quickly as the mojito & cubalibre lines on the Bacardi’s stand. The Congress received about 3000 guests like Luis Ayala, judge of the competition and creator of the magazine “Got Rum?”, Leonardo Pinto organizer of the italian’s rum festival “ShowRum” in Rome, Cyrille Hugon creator of the “Rhum Fair Paris” and Robert Burr the amazing creator of “Miami Rum Reinassence Festival” where i’ll surely go on next april.
You can call it Ron, Rum or Rhum but the result is everytime the same: a sugar cane distillate which explain you a story borned centuries ago from the America discovery to the Beginning of the slaves trade trought the USA indipendence and the “Black Tot Day” in 1970
Marco Graziano
