Also this year Ron Matusalem, from the Dominican Republic, can be discovered again at the German Rum Festival.
In 1872, in Santiago de Cuba, in the national capital and at the same time the city so famous for rum and cigars, they founded their own company to engage in the production of rum from molasses. Matusalem & Company was born, a family business in which enormous potential lay dormant. Brothers Benjamin and Eduardo Camp teamed up with business partner Evaristo Alvarez and set about incorporating their many years of experience with the typical Spanish solera process for storing brandy into rum production.
More than 100 years may have passed since the company was founded, but Matusalem & Co is still a guarantor of excellent Matusalem rum. Although the Cuban Revolution in the middle of the 20th century put a spanner in the works, the company was not completely defeated. The founding family emigrated to America, where the headquarters of Matusalem and Company are located today. The production of rum is handled by a distillery from the Dominican Republic, while marketing is the responsibility of Proximo Spirits from the USA. The Cuban distillery of that time is currently used by the government to distill Santiago rum. After the move to the United States, the families involved got into a dispute and shut down the production of Matusalem Rum. In the late 1990s, the great-grandson once again took control of the brand. In 2002 it was given a new lease of life, and since then Ron Matusalem has been available for purchase as a Dominican rum in the Cuban tradition.
To this day, the company relies on the Sistema Solera, which was introduced by the company’s founders, for aging. In this process, younger distillates are blended several times with older distillates by decanting them into specific barrels. The result is a blend full of complexity and finesse, whose oldest component could be aged for more than ten or even more than 20 years. The brand’s prestigious flagship is the luxurious, extra-long aged Ron Matusalem Gran Reserva 23 Solera Rum with woody, deep, sweet and nutty notes. It won double gold at the “San Francisco World Spirits Competition” in 2013. Made from sugar cane juice, Ron Matusalem Gran Reserva 15 ages for an average of 15 years in lightly toasted ex-bourbon barrels using the solera method. During this time, the Caribbean sun elicits spicy notes of fine vanilla, caramel and nuts from the Ron
