Destilería Serrallés

Destilería Serrallés Inc.

Type	Private
Industry	Distilled beverages
Founded	Ponce, Puerto Rico (1865)
Headquarters	Ponce, Puerto Rico
Key people	Felix Juan Serrallés, Jr. President and CEO
Products	Rum, vodka, medicinal alcohol
Revenue	$114.24 M USD
Number of employees	375, over 600 on payroll
Website	www.destileriaserralles.com

Destilería Serrallés is a rum producer located in Ponce, Puerto Rico, and best known for its Don Q rum brand. The company has revenues of over 100 million dollars. It is responsible for pumping over $120 million annually into the Puerto Rican economy from the sale of its rums in the United States mainland alone.

The history of Destilería Serrallés is the history of the Serrallés family. The Serrallés family was a Spanish family from Catalonia that established its links to Puerto Rico in the mid-1830s. They were successful in harvesting and refining cane sugar and exporting it to the United States, the United Kingdom and France. The sugar cane plantation they built virtually became a company town, and eventually had its own rail line, workers' housing, transportation fleet, commissary, and private—later public—airport (Ponce's Mercedita Airport). Most of these operations were eventually annexed to the municipality of Ponce, in whose lands the plantation is based. Sugar cane molasses imported from the Dominican Republic is still transformed into rum to this day at the same Serralles distilling facility that has been used for over a century.

In 1865, the family opened a rum manufacturing facility at their plantation, the "Hacienda Mercedita", named in honor of the Serrallés family matriarch, Mercedes Perez. On that year, Juan Serralles Colon, who would go down as one of the most successful liquor salesmen in Puerto Rican history, imported a still from France, which enabled him to produce his first casks of rum.

The Serrallés operation produced various local rum brands, most of which were short-lived. Inspired by the success of other rum producers in the island, the family launched a refined brand with the intention of exporting it elsewhere. The Ron Don Q brand was launched in 1932, and became popular with locals who considered rival Bacardi either harsher in taste or a foreign brand (Bacardí opened its distilling operations in Puerto Rico in the early 1930s, and at the time it was considered a Cuban brand, since its headquarters were based in Santiago de Cuba). By the 1960s, Ron Don Q was available in most of Puerto Rico's important supermarket chains, such as Pueblo and others. It also became available at Amigo. In addition to rum, the distillery also produces medicinal alcohol, plus wine, vodka, and Don Juan.