The History of Aguardiente
The history of aguardiente dates back a few centuries all the way back to Europe and its constant interaction with the middle east.
The art of distillation made its way into Western culture through the Spanish colonization of the americas.
At first, it was used as a cure to appease stomach problems suffered by locals and sailors alike.
Its arrival in the Americas was thanks to Christopher Columbus, who brought some sugar cane shoots on his early voyages to be cultivated in the Caribbean.
In essence, aguardiente and rum have the same beginnings (distillation of molasses or cane juice), making it difficult to determine what came first in history: When cane alcohol is produced, the name given to hearts is called tafia or aguardiente, or even outright rum. Some locations bottle the product with no aging process, some age and some add spices, giving them different names.
Spanish sailors spiced aguardiente with anise to help them in their long voyages as a botanical based cure for seasickness, just as they had done for decades across the mediterranean.
Even though Aguardiente has many similar drinks in the Mediterranean sea, only Colombia inherited and took as its own the taste of anise into its local booze. When discussing similar drinks, the cultures that still use anise in its drinks are:
- Turkey: Araki
- Greece: Ouzo
- Italy: Sambuca
- France: Pastis
- Spain: Orujo
In Colombia, since the inception of the republic in the 1830’s, the government seized the production of alcoholic beverages to turn them into a source of income by creating a state monopoly that would produce and sell its own alcoholic beverages. However, with time, and as with all state run enterprises, distillation became extinct in the 1980’s, having local companies source their alcohol in the commodity market as extra neutral cane based alcohol. Aguardiente became just a mixture of pure alcohol, water and anise extract.
The tragedy of losing our own personality in the production of Colombian spirits was to such an extent, that our national spirit has been losing market share to whisky and beer.
In 2020 the law changed and cane fields that build the capacity to produce alcohol can do so. A new era in the production of Colombian spirits has begun and is being awoken.
Licores Artesanales was born with this new law and is taking traditional distillation techniques to produce Aguardiente as it was done before. This is why you will find such complex aromatic profiles in Desquite, being produced from Virgin Molasses, maintaining a lot of its origins in the aromatic and flavor profile.
Desquite Tradicion is distilled from Cane Juice, as done hundreds of years ago, bearing a distinct similarity to Agricole Rums from the Antilles: grassy, spicy and cinnamon aromas that come natural from our organic grown cane.
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