Rum’s punch sends whisky reeling
Laboratory-like conditions have served fifth-generation rum maker Santa Teresa well — as have competitors’ prices.
Ever since he was a young man, one of Guillermo Matos’ small pleasures has been a midmonth round of cocktails with friends.
His drink of choice was always imported whisky. But with Venezuela’s economic crisis putting its price out of reach, the 45-year-old men’s tie store owner has had to change his ways, going local and switching to his country’s internationally lauded rum. He now sips a glass of Venezuelan Santa Teresa 1796, on the rocks.
Matos can buy a bottle of local rum for $8, rather than roughly $25 for a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black.
“At these prices who couldn’t enjoy a rum?” he said, while with friends at a busy Caracas restaurant.
A lot of his countrymen also are making the change. Rum sales have shot up by more than a quarter here, while whisky sales shrank by one-third, between 2012 and 2013, according to the Scotch Whisky Association. And the South American country’s ranking for world whisky consumption fell from ninth place to 14th place.
Venezuela has long been Latin America’s biggest market for Scotch, which is recognized as a status symbol here. People commonly toss it back at baseball games and arena concerts, and even workingclass families seek out a fine whisky for special events such as weddings.
The love affair with the drink was always an embarrassment to the country’s socialist leaders.
“I’m not inclined to keep giving out dollars to import whisky at this volume,” the late president Hugo Chavez said in 2007. “What revolution is this? The whisky revolution?” But economic collapse has produced a rum revival. A plunge in crude prices has battered Venezuelans’ oil-dependent economy and sharply lowered export revenues. The government has tightened rigid currency controls and restricted spending on imports to high-priority goods such as food and medicine.
With inflation running above 60 per cent, Venezuelans’ money no longer goes as far, putting whisky beyond reach for many. A bottle of Chivas Regal 18 Year Old Whisky costs $31, calculated at the blackmarket exchange rate, more than Venezuela’s monthly minimum wage.
Such economic downturns often have prompted a boost in domestic spirits, according to Nestor Ortega, master distiller at Santa Teresa, one of the country’s premier rum makers.
Besides oil, rum is one of the few exports for which the country is building an overseas reputation.
Key to its success are stringent laws that demand rum be aged for at least two years. And unlike more arid sugar-growing parts of the Caribbean, local rum makers say the fertile soil and cooler climate in the best rum-growing area outside Caracas lends Venezuelan rum a rounder, more flavourful aroma.
Even if the economy were to right itself and prices for his once-beloved whisky were to fall within reach again, Matos says he’s hooked on rum and has no intention of switching back.
“It’s been a nice surprise,” he says, adding that he’s started collecting cocktail recipes made with rum. “Venezuelan rum is very good and it’s a lot of fun to use for mixing drinks.”