MAKAWAO – Probably most people don’t think of rum distilleries as mom-and-pop businesses, but tucked away in a corner of Haleakala Ranch, down an unpaved, axle-busting driveway, Jim and Leslie Sargent are making four varieties of rum.
“It’s not a normal mom-and-pop business,” admits Jim Sargent.Braddah Kimo’s Mo’ Bettah rum can be purchased only on Maui, and you may not have heard of it, because Haleakala Distillers has an advertising and promotion budget of nothing.
But it’s gotten a favorable reception, both from a dozen local retailers, and from a reviewer at www.rumshop.net, Luis Ayala, a widely regarded rum maven.
Ayala rated the Silvah label, the basic product, as “clean and sweet aroma with mild traces of molasses in the background. The aroma is not unlike most young white rums currently in the market. Taste is sweet, has hints of vanilla, finishes slightly bitter. The body is medium to light, well rectified, but could use a bit of aging to smooth out the edges.”
Gardner Howard, the owner of Rodeo General Store in Makawao, was the first to sell a bottle of Braddah Kimo’s Silvah label, last June.
“It’s good rum,” says Howard. “Lots of tourists pick it up. It’s reasonably priced, too.”
Gardner sells other rums, but Braddah Kimo’s is “the only one I buy by the case.”
Harrison “Jim” Sargent and his wife Leslie are co-managing directors, distillers, bottle washers, bottlers, labelers etc., operating out of what used to be part of Haleakala Dairy.
The quarters are tiny, and Haleakala Distillers produces a handcrafted rum in small batches. Jim Sargent doesn’t want to say how small, but your kitchen is probably bigger than his distillery. (However, he is converting a nearby barn for storage, so he will be able to begin aging his rum.)
There really is, the Sargents say, a Braddah Kimo, and his story is on their Web site, www.haleakaladistillers.com.
However, he is reputedly shy and was not in sight during a recent interview.
The molasses taste identified by Ayala in his review comes from HC&S molasses, delivered in pickup truck loads to the distillery.
Decades in the past, Seagram set up a much larger distillery (though small by world standards) on Maui, using Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar’s abundant molasses, but it failed.
Steve Holaday, the general manager of HC&S, says the plantation has investigated the possibility of a value-added product using its molasses, but he concluded that there was no point in challenging Bacardi, the international rum giant. At any scale that would make a significant dent in HC&S’s molasses supply, rum distilling was not a workable proposition.
But on a much smaller scale, both the Sargents and Paul Case, who set up Kolani Distillers at the old Paia sugar mill, see opportunity in niche marketing.
Kolani originally planned to start distilling last August, but Case says he signed an additional agreement that required extensive adjustments to his equipment. Rather than starting up, then stopping to retool, Kolani decided to put off production until everything was in place.
Kolani is proposing to distill more than just rum. The Sargents are doing rum and only rum, although their permit from the Department of Liquor Control allows other beverages, including okolehao.
The Sargents began making rum in 2003, but Jim Sargent didn’t consider the early batches ready to sell.
Each batch, he says, is coming out better and better. In part, his problems were with filtration. Eventually he had to get a local engineer to design a custom filter for him.
Otherwise, however, he finds Makawao “a great place to do it.”
The water, from the Department of Water Supply’s Piiholo treatment plant, is good, though he treats it again.
Sargent says distilling at a higher, cooler altitude (about 1,500 feet) gives a better mash. He says Braddah Kimo once worked in the rum business in the Caribbean, where distilleries are near sea level and “the yeast is stressed.”
Given Braddah Kimo’s low output, the Sargents see no reason to seek sales outside Maui, not even on Oahu, though Sargent says they have had some inquiries from tourists who encountered the rum here and wanted to have some shipped to the Mainland.
Sargent, who encountered the alcohol business when he worked for Gallo wineries “long ago,” says making rum on Maui is “a way to take an agricultural product and not send it away” for processing or sale at low commodity price levels.
HC&S molasses is mostly shipped to the Mainland as a supplement to cattle feed.
Within a few months of having rum to deliver, Haleakala Distillers had 14 local outlets. The operation is so small that it hurt when one of them, Ah Fook’s market, burned.
Besides Rodeo General, Braddah Kimo’s rum can be found at The Wine Corner in Paia, Tradewinds Store in Kahana, Hawaii Liquor Superstore in Kahului, Pukalani Superette, Kuau Mart, Morihara Store in Kula, Aloha Discount Liquors in Kihei, Kihei Wine and Spirits, Tradewinds Market in Maalaea, Keawakapu General Store, Mr. Wine in Lahaina and Hanzawa’s Variety Store in Haiku.
The Sargents also promote their drink as the only GMO-free rum and as vegan-compatible. (Most rums, they say, are finished with animal gelatin to smooth them.)
So far, there are four varieties, Gold or Silvah, both 80 proof; Da’ Bomb Extreme, 155 proof; and a dark rum, just coming into production.
Braddah Kimo recommends limiting his rum to a couple of drinks at a time, “the way most people take it,” says Jim Sargent.
Recognizing that some don’t, the company is contributing to Aloha House, the substance abuse recovery center, and to Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
Another local enterprise they support is the drive to purchase Kaluanui for Hui No`eau.
Sorry, no tours.
Harry Eagar can be reached at heagar@mauinews.com.
