Cuba’s oldest beer, La Tropical, brought back to life in Miami

Cuba's oldest beer, La Tropical, brought back to life in Miami

Wynwood's Concrete Beach Brewing has re-created the original recipe
Miami descendants of Cerveceria La Tropical are bringing it to Miami
Brand once made up 60 percent of beer in Cuba
BY CARLOS FRÍAS
cfrias@miamiherald.com

Ramon Blanco Herrera carries his ghosts in a shiny, black tin box.

His liver-spotted hands carefully remove relics he never imagined would
become so nostalgic for him when he was a boy in Cuba. A label from the
original La Tropical beer. A certificate for stock in Cerveceria La
Tropical brewery, signed by the president, his grandfather, in 1954. A
picture of an ancestor's statue standing over the expansive tropical
beer gardens of the brewery his family founded in 1888, Cuba's first.

"I never got to enjoy it. All the free beer I could have had…" jokes
Blanco Herrera, 70, whose family saw their brewery — which produced
upwards of 60 percent of Cuba's beer — nationalized and his family exiled.

Manny Portuondo prefers to commune with his ghosts.

Portuondo, 49, the American-born son of Cuban exiles, visited Cuba for
the first time last fall, including the sprawling tropical gardens and
biergarten surrounding Cerveceria La Tropical, on the banks of the
bubbling Almendares River. It was his great, great grandfather who
developed and sold the land to the Blanco Herreras for the brewery more
than 128 years ago.

"I stood there and I was in awe," Portuondo said. "I felt that history
in my blood, running through me. I came back after that trip and said to
myself, 'I'm going to bring that back.' I want people to feel what I felt."

Lovers of craft beer and all things Cuba will get that chance.

Portuondo worked with Wynwood's Concrete Beach Brewery to re-create the
original recipe and will release La Tropical at an event at the brewery
on May 22. The event will cap American Craft Beer Week, which begins
Monday with events around town.

The beer will be sold only at the brewery for now. But both Portuondo
and Blanco Herrera, who own the world rights to the beer, and Concrete
Beach, a subsidiary of the Boston Beer Company (Samuel Adams), have
their sights set on widespread distribution.

Brewers scrubbed the copper-plated brewing tanks at Concrete Beach on
Monday as Portuondo and Blanco Herrera awaited their first taste of the
finished beer, a malty Vienna-style lager that research told them is how
the original beer would have been brewed.

In the other room awaited a beer their families had come together to
create more than 128 years ago. This day has been nearly two decades coming.

Portuondo had been fascinated with his family's ties to Cuba's beer
history. His maternal ancestors, the Kohly family, developed an entire
Havana neighborhood, including the site of La Tropical brewery and its
expansive gardens, Los Jardines de la Tropical. He graduated with a
master's in business from Florida International University and became
Anheuser-Busch's sales and marketing director in Puerto Rico 25 years ago.

He had grown up with the stories from his mother, a Kohly descendant,
and his father, Manuel, who fought in the Bay of Pigs and spent two
years in a Cuban prison after the government began nationalizing industries.

For Ramon Blanco Herrera, the connection was even more immediate. He
remembers running around La Tropical brewery, which his
great-grandfather had founded, and playing in his father's office. His
father, Cosme Blanco Herrera, had gone to the University of Pennsylvania
to study business and returned to run the family business.

"The Mr. and Mrs. Budweiser of Cuba," Manny Portuondo dubbed Ramon's
parents.

But when the Communist government seized the factory in the early 1960s,
Blanco Herrera's family came to the United States penniless, and his
father ended up working in a bank — in the mailroom. Ramon grew up in
Key Biscayne with only hazy memories of his time at the brewery.

He raised three children and rarely spoke about the depth of his
family's long history. It was only from friends who told stories about
the brewery amid a lush tropical urban garden — picture Central Park,
complete with an actual castle designed by by an Antoni Gaudi disciple —
that they realized how much their family had contributed to Cuba's culture.

Over the years, Ramon scoured eBay for relics — old postcards, photos,
bottles and labels — of the old Tropical brewery.

"He never talked about it," said Moncy Blanco Herrera, 36, Ramon's
oldest. "I think he was he too broken-hearted about it. It took a toll
on him. It's very bittersweet for him."

Meanwhile, Portuondo was learning the modern beer business, including
starting up Brahma Brewery of Brazil, which he later sold to
Anheuser-Busch, now AB-InBev. He realized Cuba was still brewing La
Tropical and its popular sub-brand, Cristal, in partnership with the
Belgian-based InBev.

He teamed with Blanco Herrera and re-established their rights to the
brand some 17 years ago, even brewing for three years out of Coral
Gables in the late 1990s. (InBev and Cuba continue to brew Cristal, even
as the beer magnate recently admitted in a 2011 annual report to the
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that there are claims to the
name. Portuondo has filed a claim against the company.)

Blanco Herrera's youngest son, Eddie, remembers growing up with
memorabilia from that endeavor, including a neon La Tropical sign he
used as a nightlight and still keeps in his room. Moncy was the life of
the party at the University of Florida when his father showed up with a
case of that batch of La Tropical. And daughter Rosa remembers walking
into a New Orleans bar and finding a picture of gangster Al Capone
having a La Tropical beer outside the Havana brewery.

"The family legacy continues. … It's truly a staple of what Cuba was,"
said Rosa, 32, named for great-great aunt Rosita, whom her father called
the "Paris Hilton of beer."

La Tropical got new life recently with America's surge in craft beer
interest. Portuondo met Concrete Beach founder Alan Newman, who loved
the idea of bringing back Cuba's first beer.

"We're always looking for ways we can be more of a part of the
community," Newman said. "Bringing back the most Cuban beer you can brew
seemed like a no-brainer."

This week, it came to fruition. Blanco Herrera and Portuondo slipped
beyond the glass doors into Concrete Beach's bruhaus, where a brewer
poured each of them a glass of La Tropical right out of the bright tanks
that are used for adding carbon dioxide in the final brewing step.

Portuondo kneeled to reach the tap. It felt like a moment of silent
reverence.

He and Blanco Herrera exchanged a glance as they brought their glasses
to their noses and took their first sip of a beer decades in the
remaking. The amber lager was malty, almost creamy, without any bitterness.

"My ancestors would not be disappointed," he said.

They are hoping Miami beer lovers will feel the same way.

Source: Cuba's oldest beer, La Tropical, brought back to life in Miami |
In Cuba Today - http://www.incubatoday.com/news/article77244882.html