Students will have a new favorite ‘Cane’s’ in town when Cane Land Distilling Company comes to Baton Rouge next year.
The rum distillery will break ground on its new distilling plant off River Road later this year, producing rum from fresh Louisiana sugar cane and molasses grown on the Alma Sugar Cane Plantation located just 17 miles northwest of the city.
Cane Land co-founder and Baton Rouge native Walter Tharp said the distillery will stand out in the midst of many craft spirit distillers emerging on the market because it will use only local raw products.
“I think one of the things that is unique about what we’re doing is that we’ll be one of the only true farm-to-label entities in the spirits world,” Tharp said. “You have people out there that are taking spirits from a major plant, putting a cool label on it and calling it hand crafted. We will be the real deal.”
Tharp said the distillery’s proximity to the sugar mill is key to producing rhum agricole, a rum spirit made from sugar cane juice, instead of molasses.
“Fresh pressed cane juice starts to ferment immediately so that’s the reason we chose Baton Rouge to be close to the mill,” Tharp said. “Once [the sugar cane] pressed or it’s crushed you have about a two hour window to distill it.”
The only other producer of rhum agricole in the country is the California-based St. George Spirits, Tharp said.
“They’re only able to produce about 500 bottles annually, but we’ll be able to produce more in 30 minutes than they can in an entire year,” Tharp said.
Tharp said the Alma Sugar Cane Plantation has been owned by his family for years, and produced more than 400 million pounds of sugar last year and 10 million gallons of molasses.
In rum distilling, the cane juice or molasses is fermented using yeast that changes the sugar into alcohol, then distilled, or purified. Then the rum is aged from a few months to several years. However, aging rum does not take as long as other spirits like whiskey.
“One of the barriers to entry in the whiskey business is that it takes three to eight years to age whisky. Rum is much different in that once you distill it, you can take the edge off of it for about three months, and you can have a white spirit that is ready to be bottled,” Tharp said. “You can have a spirit much faster than you can in most other spirits endeavors.”
Tharp said he and his co-founder, Jim Massey, are hoping to make the distillery a part of the Baton Rouge and University community. They are even working on a possible internship program for students as well allow people to visit the distillery and bottle rum.
“People can come to the distillery and do a 30 minute tutorial on how to bottle spirits, and we’ll let them work in the distillery for about five hours and then they’ll leave with a bottle of rum and a T-shirt,” Tharp said. “We think its going to be a pretty cool program, and it will build brand ambassadors. It will give students at LSU and Baton Rouge citizens a sense of ownership of the distillery.”
Tharp said Cane Land has a distribution agreement already in place to get the spirits out to stores once production gets underway. Cane Land will produce a few types of rum and rhum agricole, with different aging and production processes for each.
He said Cane Land was originally thinking of using a celebrity to help sell and propel the brand, but chose not to.
“We decided that the actual product is the star, and that it is unique to have the ability to walk out on the fields and say this is where your spirit came from,” Tharp said. “Even massive distilleries are trucking their grain and raw product from other farms around the country. This going to be a totally local Louisiana product.”