Don José Valera Blanco built the first sugar mill in the town of Pese in the recently-formed Republic of Panama in 1908. The company began producing its rum from the sugar mill's sugar cane juice in 1936. It didn’t take long for his sons to convince him to develop it into a distillery. These remarkable rums are created at the hands of the expert distillers at Varela Hermanos, a family-owned company, who have continued their grandfather's legacy (where the rum's name originates).
Ron Abuelo (Grandfather Rum in English) grow and cultivate all of their own sugar cane, allowing them to keep tight control over the whole production ensuring the quality is always high. The rums are created by careful blending of two styles of rum: a light, clean rum distilled to a higher proof and an aromatic base rum with bold, exotic flavours. Carefully crafted and aged in oak barrels that extract notes of vanilla and caramel, the final result is a rich and fragrant spirit that offers subtle, complex flavours not found in regular rums