Cane to Bottle

Alligator Bay Distillery

It’s a glorious blue sky/warm breeze kind of day in Punta Gorda when I visit Alligator Bay Distillers, a family-owned and operated small-batch craft distillery that specializes in rum made from sugarcane molasses. I slip in to the main office hoping to be inconspicuous but I’ve managed to join the tail end of a tour, and co-founder Benjamin Voss is sampling product for an enthusiastic group of tourists.

He mentions something about fennel-flavored rum as I head for the sweet-faced black Lab that’s wagging her tail at me from the corner of the room. Fennel-flavored rum? I’m intrigued. The name on the dog’s tag is “Kolohe” and I make a note to ask the meaning behind the name.

The tourists are asking for restaurant recommendations and Benjamin tells them to check out Peace River Seafood Company and The Celtic Ray Public House. They ask him about other distilleries and he doesn’t hesitate to extol the virtues of Siesta Key Rum, located in Sarasota. There’s also a map on the wall that shows all the distillers and brewers along the Gulf Coast of Southwest Florida. There’s a lack of artifice and an abundance of old Florida charm to the whole operation—these folks are not averse to competition and they’re extremely comfortable with their place in the world, and on the “Gulf Toast” map.

When the tour group departs with smiles and promises to return, Benjamin introduces me to his brother, Alex, and I’m beckoned into the garage/warehouse that is the distillery. The doors are wide open on both sides of the cavernous space and verdant foliage surrounds us. Kolohe has followed us through the door and is stretched out in the shade. The overall effect is that of a jungle outpost and I feel transported as Alex walks me through the five-step process of distilling rum that begins with the raw material of 100% Floridian blackstrap molasses that is delivered from Clewiston in a tanker, approximately every six months. The giant container of molasses (2,500 gallons) takes about 40 minutes to fill up. I learn a couple of interesting facts at this point: 1) Molasses takes years to go bad; 2) Raw sugarcane molasses tastes a lot like Vegemite—salty, malty, umami. I ask Alex why he uses Clewiston sugarcane exclusively and the answer is that the supply chain has never been interrupted, and the product is superior. Sugarcane thrives in South Florida’s warm climate and “mucky” soil.

I’ve written about quite a few breweries and distilleries in my tenure with Edible Sarasota and I can tell you a few things that tie these businesses together: passion, ambition, a desire for autonomy, and a proclivity for math and/or science. These people tend to be former chemists and biology majors—the kind of students who can tell you pretty quickly when Train A and Train B are going to meet at the station. Alex was a graphic designer with an impressive pedigree and Benjamin went to school for automotive engineering.

I ask Alex why his dog has a Hawaiian name and he tells me that Kolohe means “rascal” and that the Hawaiian connection is the origin story for this sugarcane rum distillery in Punta Gorda. Alex found himself restless in his former career and decided to take a friend up on an opportunity to work in construction on a hotel in Maui. When the construction work ran out, Alex took to craigslist and by chance discovered a job described as a “rum apprenticeship.” Alex found his passion, and when Benjamin visited a couple of years later and the idea of a partnership took hold. Their mother, Margarita, found the location that is now Alligator Bay Distillers for sale by owner and the rest, as they say, is history.

There’s a lot of cool tech at work in this low-key, low-tech setting. Alex shows me the locally constructed Diamond Head still which can distill eight gallons per hour. There’s a gravity-operated bottling system that has been calibrated to fill bottles precisely. There’s a filtration system for the dark rum that involves granulated charcoal. Alex calls it a “Brita for rum.”

I’ve learned a lot of things about distilling liquor and brewing beer over the years. One of those things is that the process is a labor of love and focus; the other is that small-batch anything tastes better than mass production. I left Alligator Bay Distillers with a bottle of the aforementioned fennel-flavored rum, a bar of spiced rum soap, and a promise to return because the spiced rum makes a great-smelling soap but small-batch also means that you can’t always get a particular bottle, and I’m definitely interested in owning a bottle of the local rum that won a Double Gold Medal at the World Spirits Competition in San Francisco in 2020.

Tours and tastings are free at Alligator Bay Distillers and Benjamin and Alex Voss are as worth the trip as their rum is—tell them we sent you!

Alligator Bay Distillers: 25522 Marion Ave, Punta Gorda; 941-347-8419; alligatorbaydistillers.com