Rum Connoisseur Interview of the Week MIRIAM PACHECO Uruapan Charanda – General Manager
Rum Connoisseur
Interview of The Week:
MIRIAM PACHECO
Uruapan Charanda – General Manager
1. Who is Miriam Pacheco?
She is the General Manager at Uruapan Charanda (DO sugar cane spirit). The Pacheco’s trace their family’s tradition of producing Charanda back to 1907. Once mezcal producers, the family swapped their maguey for sugar cane thanks to the profitability of piloncillo (a lightly refined sugar product), and soon after started making a cane based spirit. The earliest iterations were single distilled spirits at around 35% alcohols by volume and simply called ‘aperitivo’ or ‘aguardiente.’
2. What does the rum mean for you? What made you fall in love with rum and when did it happen?
I was not at all familiar with the word rum, now in recent years I use it more. Always at home it was charanda or aguardiente as we refer to our sugar cane spirit. It has always been a part of our lives, my dad and my brothers, we all grew up among sugar cane field and pot stills. We all played in wooden tubs blowing bubbles from the fermentation playing with employees and helping to prepare the paste called “engrudo” to stick the labels with flour and water not glue. I could not tell you when I fell in love because it would be like answering when I started to love my family.
3. Three essential characteristics that define the rum according to your perspective.
Made with love and passion, that is unique according to what you are to what surrounds you, to your culture and your terroir.
4. What is the most important contribution you have made in the rum industry?
Rescue and revalue a category, the cultivation of avocado and berries and the cartels have made that there are almost no more producers, of 100 of a century ago. Now there are 5 or 6, also produce with better quality, old recipes, and more information on how it is done.
5. Benefits that the rum industry has given you.
I found a passion to live and to wake up happy, I have learned from my family specially from my older brother Fernando and my dad. I can eat every day and also my family and employers. We have house and everything to live, to survive, to travel, to meet people, to love people and many others that I cannot count.
6. What´s another thing you are passionate about, in addition to rum? Why?
As a family we love art and we have a very nice arts project that my brother Fernando started, for children mainly but also for adults in the place of the old distiller. From there have come children who now professionally dedicate themselves to music like my son who is in the conservatory of Hungary and many clients have made contributions and we are very grateful. It helps in a place with so much violence to have other opportunities.
7. What is your favorite place for drinking rum?
I do not have a favorite place, I think it is good for our soul to drink with someone you enjoy to be with even if it is yourself and you are alone.
8. Favorite drink + Recipe
A very old way to drink it is called CHARAPE, you put pine apple juice (natural) and piloncillo (brown sugar) and it will be fermented after some days, then you add some charanda and ice or hot ponche with guava and hibiscus, tejocotes, and sugar cane.
9. Why is it important to educate the rum consumer?
It is good for them to know differences and they have the information to choose what to drink and what is behind.
10. Any tips to train the palate and taste a good premium rum?
My dad always added very hot water to smell well but I know that is not easy for everybody.
11. How can the rum contribute to improve the crisis in some countries?
Supports many families, in all towns we have our bread and our wines or distillates product of what we have at hand more easily, such as wheat, barley, corn, agave, in our case it was cane and we learned to work it and have the income to live like many others, it is important to generate the best working conditions and avoid excessive consumption, as we say “charanda sabrosura pa´ gozarse con mesura”.
12. Is the commitment to sustainable development the key of success for the permanence of the rum industry in the world? Why?
In all industries it is incongruous if we don’t; it is an unavoidable commitment for everyone.
13. Who would like to meet in the rum industry? What would you say to him/her?
Luca Gargano. I love what he made with Richard Seale about classification, maybe now I do not ask I prefer to listen what he says.
14. What are your next goals in the rum industry?
Keep rescuing our category and tradition
15. Plans you have when you leave the rum industry.
I will travel a lot and maybe I will live in the sugar cane field with a hammock
16. Why is the role of the bartender important in the rum industry?
We need a chef to create something beautiful with a simple good tomato or avocado; it is the same with bartender. You can enjoy wonderful things and flavors together that give us a great experience.
17. What is your advice for new generations in the rum industry?
In the rum industry and in any job, you must be constant, honest, transparent, creative, attentive, open to learning from the good and the bad, living in the present.
