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Weird Drinkers love their unusual sips (and there are plenty out there, like this naturally intoxicating Black Drink or a booze produced from coconut flower nectar). Today’s potent beverage comes from a Caribbean tradition.
The demise of Puerto Rico’s commercial sugar production has resulted in changes—and could eventually spell disaster—for a beloved tradition on the island: moonshine. It’s this time of year, around the holidays, when those changes are felt most acutely.
That’s because the holidays mark the high season for moonshiners. Clandestine stills and their tenders are busy steaming away, converting giant vats of fermented sugar water into something more potent. Dripping from pipes sticking out of homemade condensers, an illicit sugar-based spirit is eagerly being bottled in hidden hideouts and forested nooks around the island.
The overproof alcohol, with colorful names like “tears of the mountain” or “mangrove’s tears,” is then mixed with dry ingredients, most often fruit, and tucked away for a few months to make what’s commonly recognized as pitorro. Purists also use the illegal distillate as the alcoholic bombshell inside coquito, a traditional coconut-based drink brought to holiday parties and shared among family and friends.
Holiday staple: A bottle of coquito, made with pitorro
A photo of topped-off glass bottles on social media or a text to a friend of a friend is usually enough to produce the goods for those looking to buy pitorro. Every consumer has a favorite, or at least convenient, contact. And for those unwilling to tangle with illegal pitorro distillers, a number of licensed options exist, a daring group trying to elevate the moonshine’s legacy.
But for the true diehards, pitorro doesn’t come from a factory; it comes from the land and from neighbors.
Today’s pitorro makers are happy to use whatever sugars are on hand to produce their firewater. But not long ago, the assumption was that the raw ingredients for pitorro came from Puerto Rico. Whether it was chunks of raw sugar or a few buckets of molasses purchased or pilfered from a nearby sugar mill, the raw material was easily obtained on the island.
A homemade still on display at Port Morris Distillery, in the Bronx, New York
Today, pitorro is a tradition that’s perhaps less threatened by local and federal authorities, which still frown on the practice and have jailed more than a few moonshiners, than from the economics of the island.
The end of commercial sugar production in Puerto Rico in the early 2000s meant pitorro makers, along with the island’s rum producers, needed to look elsewhere for their raw ingredients. Today’s producers will use molasses usually intended as cattle feed, raw sugar and even refined sugar, according to Rafael Rodriguez, a pitorro maker who has been making the firewater for four decades.
Living near the Puerto Rican town of Guayama, in an area once-known for its sugarcane production, Rodriguez sat on a neighbor’s porch last year to recount the glory days of pitorro production. A nearby overlook revealed a valley that used to be seeded with sugarcane for a local mill. Today the area is lined with trees and clusters of houses.
No sugarcane here
Rodriguez has done what he can to pass along his legacy, namely guiding Bronx-based entrepreneur, Rafael Barbosa in co-launching the Port Morris Distillery, a licensed pitorro producer in New York City.
But on the island, Rodriguez has seen a change in the availability and quality of pitorro. While the quality of pitorro has always been somewhat up in the air, because of its improvised process, Rodriguez said high-quality moonshine is harder to find than it was years ago. It’s also more expensive, he said, which makes it less competitive with the whiskeys and rums legally available at liquor stores around the island.
Back when the sugar mills were running, “each neighborhood had its pitorrero [pitorro maker],” he explained. “Before, there was variety. It was easier to find.” Today, he said, “true pitorreros don’t exist anymore.”
Since the last commercial sugarcane harvest in 2002, pitorro falls into two camps.
There’s licensed production, led by Puerto Rico-based companies like Destilería Cruz, distiller of “Pitorro Rum” PitoRico, and Destilería Coqui, which makes “the registered brand Pitorro,” along with Bronx-based Port Morris Distillery, making its own version of pitorro using agricultural ingredients from New York state. While these spirits makers are tiny compared to island giants like Don Q producer Destilería Serrallés and Bacardí, they’re still finding a market for their product and paying taxes on their sales.
Then there’s the illegal producers, a collection of farm-style moonshiners, long-time neighborhood distillers and less-scrupulous hustlers willing to sell overproof hooch that has been known to cause health problems. The best of the lot is venerated by pitorro and coquito purists, a symbol of a fading era.
A 2014 government effort to revive the island’s production of sugarcane ran into the buzzsaw of Hurricane Maria, but even before then it was hamstrung by underdelivery. In 2016 the project weighed in at less than 1,000 acres of planted sugarcane. The government originally wanted to have some 20,000 acres of sugarcane planted that year.
But even the government’s unmet goal paled in comparison to the glory years of Puerto Rican sugar production. In 1945, seven years before the island’s sugary highwater production mark, there were 302,000 acres of sugarcane planted across the island, according to a 2012 analysis.
While federal and local authorities have struggled to kickstart sugar production on Puerto Rico, market forces and consumers’ tastes have supported the licensed pitorro industry. Just as craft beer and single-origin coffee have proliferated, quirky spirits have also gained traction among cocktail enthusiasts and Instagrammers eager to showcase their individuality. That tailwind could be just what quality pitorro makers need.
Destilería Cruz founder José Luis Cruz, overcame his initial hesitation to open a distillery in Jayuya back in 2012, a significant investment in the mountainous heart of the island. He spent $600,000 on the proper licenses and equipment to manufacture and sell the spirit, “bringing it into the 21st century,” he told a local publication.
Destilería Cruz in Jayuya, Puerto Rico
“Pitorro is something cultural—folkloric— and the town with culture is Jayuya. I’m a proud resident of Jayuya and I liked weaving business with culture, as well as bringing jobs and economic development to my town,” he told El Nuevo Dia. Today, PitoRico is sold in liquor stores as far away as New York City.
The Port Morris neighborhood of the Bronx, New York
Off of the island, Port Morris Distillery was featured in an episode of VICELAND’s Hustle, as Barbosa and co-owner William Valentín tried to expand the market for pitorro, pitching the product to the Four Seasons luxury hotel chain. Last year, the duo collaborated with Bronx-based coffee startup Don Carvajal Cafe to produce a popular limited-edition coffee-infused pitorro. This year, the pitorro maker collaborated with Café Ama, a coffee brand grown in Puerto Rico, to make a special pitorro.
A 2019 collaboration: Don Carvajal Cafe’s coffee with Port Morris Distillery’s pitorro
Questions remain, however, around the staying power of pitorro, or at least its high-quality version. Among some Puerto Ricans, the spirit is a taste of home. “It’s a tradition from my grandparents and great-grandparents,” explained César Torres, who has been making PitoRico in Jayuya since 2016.
“It’s a family recipe,” echoed Barbosa. Not only did his uncle teach him how to make pitorro, but Barbosa has turned his distillery into a community gathering place, with family members helping run periodic events for the neighborhood, like campaign events and even a low-key Puerto Rico Day get-together, a bright spot in a year derailed by the coronavirus pandemic.
But there’s ground to cover in the quest to elevate pitorro; Puerto Rico’s native spirit could use some staying power.
Port Morris Distillery co-owner William Valentín leads a tour in 2019
Another Caribbean country, Haiti, is producing clairin, a type of overproof rum made with local sugarcane varieties and wild yeasts. From coast to coast in the U.S., it has found its way into high-end cocktail bars and mixologists’ liquor cabinets.
Meanwhile Jamaica cranked open the spout on its highly aromatic overproof rums, finding a secure perch on the shelves of increasingly popular tiki-themed bars.
If it’s an image problem, Mexico is where Puerto Rico should be looking, thinks Rodriguez. Instead of comparing pitorro to the rum produced on adjacent islands, he sees the glamour of tequila reflected in the somewhat scruffy profile of pitorro. “Pitorro in Puerto Rico means the same thing as tequila for Mexico,” he said. “There are local ways of making tequila and it inspires pride in Mexicans.”
“We’re very patriotic. That extends to everything that we make,” explained Valentín, who makes regular family trips to Puerto Rico. “We take a lot of pride in our flag. We take a lot of pride in our coquí.” (The coquí is a native frog of Puerto Rico, with a song so distinct it’s been featured in songs around the world.)
“We take a lot of pride in what we make on our island,” he said. Pitorro isn’t just a fiery drink, it’s a true aqua vitae: a distillation of the very soul of the island.
But as cane production becomes more memory than reality, Valentín and others will see how soundly the island’s heart is beating. The test couldn’t come at a more crucial time, just as pitorro is refining its story and seeking new markets.
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