Sugar cane

Different things come out of the same cane, and they are worth keeping apart.

Guarapo is the juice, freshly milled. Fermented and distilled it gives something of the order of a seco. Cane honey and raspadura are what is left when that juice is boiled until it sets; fermented and distilled they give something of the order of a rum.

It is not a labelling distinction: it is where the sugar comes from and what happened to it before it fermented.

Where it is milled. In mills like Don Juan Ortega's, in San Juan, in the district of San Francisco, Veraguas. He makes cane honey and raspadura; the cane juice we made together, and one time a rum came out of it, fermented and distilled with my own fermenter and my own still. That afternoon is told in A cane mill in San Juan.

Not everything comes from one place: sometimes cane is bought from other artisans around the country to complement it.

What comes out. Alliodora is distilled cane juice aged in laurel wood. Tostao is built on distilled cane honey, and that is why it lands of the order of a rum and not a seco. Camino Real is Panamanian cane rum, spiced and with honey from the apiaries.