Pepe Margo Distillery: Aruba's First-Ever Craft Distillery
Before Pepe Margo Distillery, no craft distillery was turning out true Aruban spirits. This is the first fact Jonathan Harms, director of Pepe Margo Distillery, shares as we set off on a tour of the distillery. The hybrid still distillery produces Pepe Margo Rum and Pepe Margo Distillery London Dry Gin—the first spirits entirely produced on the island. The process from distillation to tasting is set in a traditional Aruban home.
— By Kylee Ross
— Photography Kenneth Theysen
As we stand in the breezy entrance, spotting elements from the original structure and imagining what the house looked like, Harms shares the story behind the building’s history.
Tell me about the significance of the house.
Jonathan Harms: The distillery is named after Catarina Margarita (Margo) Arends Wever. Margo married my grandmother’s uncle, Dominico Wever, whose parents built this house 125 years ago. But Margo was always associated with the home. This house belonged to members of our family, but it was in a derelict state. When we started, the house didn’t have plastered walls, a ceiling or a roof.
Why was this house associated with Margo?
JH: Margo was the matriarch of her family. Her parents died in quick succession when her siblings were young. Her brother became the de facto breadwinner and she the homemaker. She learned to take care of the household and care for her siblings as a mother figure. She did that until all of her siblings started their own lives.
That's when she met Dominico Wever. He started Aruba’s first print shop in the garden behind the house called General Printing Company. They got married and had three kids. When he died, Margo was left to take care of her kids and run the business.
She inspired us because she not only took care of her family, but she took care of the business. She also started a business from home. She sold snacks and sweets from the house’s front window. That’s why we refer to the house as the house of Pepe Margo (pepe means godmother in Papiamento). We wanted to build our distillery in her home, and we thought it would be a nice continuation of what the house always represented.
We move to the patio, where a few tables are set for sipping gin and tonics or rum daiquiris. We walk past the herb garden and enter the distillery. The walls are painted green to differentiate the new parts from the restored parts of the home. The copper drums of the distillery are discernable from the windows—adding transparency to the production process that is paramount to the distillery.
Why did you open a distillery?
JH: My family's been selling alcohol for three generations. We've always imported, dis-
tributed and sold alcoholic beverages across the ABC islands (Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao) and abroad. We've always had an affiliation with spirits, and now we want to lend our character to producing our own spirits.
Tell me about the rum production process at Pepe Margo Distillery.
JH: Rum is defined as any spirit from which the fermentable sugars have originated from sugar cane or a sugar cane derivative. We use molasses, which is the most commonly used raw material to make rum.
Step one is in the fermentation room. We move the molasses into a drum that looks like the distillation tanks but with an agitator, a motor on top and a propeller inside. It'll mix the molasses with water and yeast. Once combined, the mixture is transferred into one of our four fermenters. The yeasts convert the sugars into alcohol.
Alcohol has certain characteristics that will inhibit further growth and activity of yeasts. So once it gets to a certain concentration, the yeasts start dying out. This is where we carry out our distillation. Distillation is a simple physical separation process. What we're going to do is try to extract as much alcohol and flavor developed in fermentation while discarding anything else through the collection process. We do that by using the physical properties of boiling points and separate the components in the mix based on their boiling point. So we heat up the molasses mixture to the point where the alcohol will evaporate out of the mix and the water will remain behind. The alcohol will evaporate out through the still and further evaporate up through the column. The alcohol vapor sent up the condenser will condense and turn into a liquid again.
Once we’ve smelled the raw materials and components of the distillation process in the balmy distillery room, we take seats across from each other in the cistern. Harms opens a latch in the floorboards, revealing a cool basement filled with barrels of rum.
Tell me about the gin production process at Pepe Margo Distillery.
JH: We don’t ferment in this process. We use juniper berries and other botanicals that are macerated in alcohol. In addition, we use herbs from our garden. We have lemongrass, basil, rosemary and thyme. We use the herbs in our mix to give it some local flavor. What we do next is distil the alcohol that the botanicals are macerated in, and we distil out the essential oils so they infuse and mix with the alcohol to produce what's called gin.
We crawl down the four-step ladder to the bottom of the cistern where Harms lets us smell the ageing rum directly in the barrel. Notes of vanilla, tobacco and oak fill the air as Harms uncorks the first barrel. I try to pick up on the same flavors in my rum daiquiri back on the garden patio. The cocktail is so well-balanced with lime and sugar, and the distilled rum is so smooth, I barely taste the sharp bite l would expect.
OPENING HOURS
Mon-Fri: 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Sat: 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
