In the back room of Clio’s, a restaurant nestled in the heart of Antigua, Guatemala, a small group of American journalists and PR representatives and Columbian clothing brand owners are dressed in cocktail attire and sitting with a tray of chocolate, truffle honey, slices of parmesan cheese, and a selection of three rums in front of them. Soft murmurs between coworkers and the rustle of fabric against chairs become increasingly noticeable as the room settles into silence. All attention is trained on a diminutive older woman in a glittering red sweater who surveys the crowd from the front of the room, a glass of rum balanced between manicured fingers. A grin creeps across her face. “Listo?” She asks. A bald, serious-looking man stationed in the back intones into a radio, trained to a frequency that is distributed into the hungry ears of the English speakers. “Ready?” He translates. We’re on the edge of our seats. I adjust my earpiece. 

“It’s dangerous." Lorena Vásquez, one of the handful of female master blenders on Earth and figurehead of one of Guatemala’s largest exports, Zacapa Rum, switches to English for a moment. She stretches her arms out on either side, her smile wider still, her immaculately made-up face twinkling with a near-adolescent glee. “Life is dangerous, and we just have to enjoy it. Tonight, we are going to drink like angels.”

It is early February and we have all arrived in Antigua from our respective corners of the world to drink Zacapa like angels under the tutelage of Lorena Vásquez. The visit is a particularly special one, a celebration of her 40th anniversary with the brand as well as the forthcoming Women’s History Month, and Lorena is a special person. After moving from Nicaragua to Guatemala in her twenties with a degree in Chemistry & Pharmacy, she took a position alongside a cavalry of men as a quality control tester at a local brewery. From there, armed with a once-in-a-generation palette and an unshakeable work ethic, Vásquez worked her way up to master blender at Zacapa Rum, which expanded from a family-owned distillery into an internationally acclaimed luxury alcohol brand under her shrewd, energetic supervision. 

To appreciate Zacapa, one really only has to taste it—even a consumer ignorant to the unique distillation, aging, and distribution process can easily discern Zacapa’s unique flavor profiles, which are less harsh, sweeter, and more complex than direct competitors—but to learn about Zacapa makes the experience all the more enriching. Zacapa, as our group learns in the four days in the company of Vásquez and her coworkers, is inextricable from Guatemalan land and people and tradition itself. 

So really, the process of learning about Zacapa begins from the minute one enters Guatemalan jurisdiction. I am the only passenger on the shuttle from the Guatemala City airport to Antigua. The driver navigates the unwieldy van through a Cafe Barista drive-through in the city and we sip our coffees, ever patiently, in the 25-mile long line of traffic on CA-1 (the Pan-American highway vein that stretches from Alaska to the tip of Argentina). We inch our way through the city and up lush mountains, and he tells me about the political divides that stratified ethnic groups even in the years following the nation’s civil war; about the frequent natural disasters that strike suddenly and violently, about the zoning in Guatemala City which unfurls in tight spiral starting in the interior; about motorcycle accidents on the main freeway; about the richest family in the region that owns Pollo Campero, an international fast food chain. 

And, as the landscape changes and cobblestones replace pavement under our tires, I learn about Antigua, literally meaning “Ancient.” The actual location of the city, currently situated in a valley under three looming active volcanoes (Agua, Fuego, and Acatenango), has moved thrice since its founding in 1524, having been prone to earthquakes, fires, and flooding due to its precarious location in a seismic zone. These are fun facts; helpful tidbits in the grand scheme of Guatemalan history, really, but all seminal to fully understanding Zacapa—without the land, rich in minerals and volcanic soil, Zacapa wouldn’t be. Without the people, who have deep knowledge of the land and an understanding of its whims and artistic traditions, Zacapa (and its signature handwoven petate band around every bottle) wouldn’t be.

So, myself and a lucky few others find ourselves happily engrossed in a three-day history lesson peppered with bespoke tasting experiences, lavish meals, and in-depth site visits. Zacapa is one of the few fine rums in the world that doesn’t come from the Caribbean. The brand distinguishes itself from other rums in nearly every step of the process for a number of reasons, one being that they use virgin sugar cane grown from the aforementioned volcanic soil instead of molasses in their distillation process, one being that they use a strain of pineapple yeast in their fermentation, which lends itself to the rum’s unique flavor profile and makes it distinctly sweeter. The third, that the rum itself is aged, as the company names it, “above the clouds,” which is to say it is aged in old sherry, American whiskey, and wine barrels at an altitude that yields a more complex flavor profile. The fourth, that each bottle is adorned with a woven band made out of dried palm leafs; each band hand-woven by women in the El Progreso, El Quiché, and Jocotán regions across the country, in an effort to funnel extra money directly into the pockets of women affected by domestic or political challenges. 

Lorena, explosive and funny and ridiculously chatty, makes herself hyper available throughout the trip to all with questions or concerns—a trait that feels genuine, rare for a person of her job’s caliber. It’s the most easily identifiable reason for her astronomic success in the face of the male-dominated field—she’s smart and engaging. She’s magnetic. She sits in the back of the bus on the way to Finca El Tempixque, a coffee farm at the bottom of the fire volcano, and quells various worries about an imminent explosion due to the “sleeping” volcano. (“It won’t happen while you’re here,” she grins at the women on the bus, who frantically Google phrases like volcano explosion how long asleep and antigua volcano catastrophes. She winks. “No need to be scared.”) 

After our tour of the farm, Vásquez teaches us to make espresso martinis using her rum, and regales us with innumerable renditions of Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito.” The stern bald translator, a comical foil to Vásquez’s effervescent company, whispers through our earpieces in earnest. “Shake your hips. You must use your arms. Then: despacito, slowly, like the song,” he says with a straight face, watching Lorena move through the crowd, tapping people on the shoulder.

The days are warm and the sun is direct and we’re all politely tipsy throughout them. On our first full day, we eat a decadent lunch at Casa Traccoli, a 450 year old structure that has withstood the litany of natural disasters in Antigua, passed down from Italian colonial merchants to their Guatemalan ancestors. We eat decadent dinners and breakfasts at our shared hotel, Casa Santo Domingo, a renovated convent that now houses six museums, two art galleries, a spa, a chapel, restaurants, and a chocolate factory. We take lunch at the obscenely picturesque Villa Bokéh. 

Every experience, singular in its beauty and orientation towards detail, is underscored by a general eagerness to impart historical information about the city and its people as an imperative of the visitor experience—it’s a rare and welcome phenomenon these days, especially in an era where flights are cheaper and social media has flattened the earth into secular sites that offer themselves up to a good photograph.

Antigua is a place that lends itself to a wonderful photograph (and a relatively easy travel experience for American foreigners, being that many of the shops take card or even American money), but it insists upon engagement with the space and time from where it came.

“When I started, people were used to these Caribbean rums.” Vásquez tells me. We’re lounging under an awning at Villa Bokéh following a masterclass she has just run; we’ve all made our own unique blends of rum and will later find small bottles of our personal blend in our hotel rooms inscribed with our names. There is a twenty minute break before lunch. I’ve just made a rather smoky blend of rum aged in whiskey caskets, and she’s tasted 15 people’s different personal blends and reassured them yes, this is delicious. We’re talking about the inception of her time with Zacapa, and what it was like to be a woman leading a brand into international preeminence. 

“When we started participating in international fairs and expos [in the 80s and early 90s], we would have to say, ‘No, we’re not from the Caribbean. We’re from Guatemala.’ People would be shocked! This was the biggest challenge, at first, was convincing consumers to get on our side. The other challenge was that many people only drank rum with Coke. We had to convince them that rum, like whiskey or sherry, could be enjoyed neat,” she says. “It’s a luxury beverage.”

I look around the villa. A helicopter lands on the lawn, depositing a handful of guests before buzzing away. Hotel employees with crispy uniforms walk about in tandem, smoothly, as if they’re in an elaborately choreographed dance. “What does luxury mean to you, Lorena?” I ask. She looks to her translator, chatting fiercely. “One of the most important things for Zacapa is time. Timing is luxury. Another luxury element is the petate ring. They are being done 100% by hand, by each lady, and putting it manually on each bottle. That is also luxury. Each bottle—each glass of a Zacapa drink—represents all the work of these Guatemalan people (women and men) working behind the brand.”

On the final evening in Antigua, we meet three women—some of whom are second and third generation participants—who are part of Zacapa’s petate weaving initiative. Beginning in the late 90s, the hand woven petate band and the program surrounding it has become a signature tenant of the Zacapa brand, has invigorated communities of females across Guatemala, allowing them the extra money to save up for school, to take care of children, or to pay for medical bills, all from the comfort of their own homes in their free time. The women show us, slowly and carefully, how the fingers must move; how the palm leaves must be stripped; how any mistakes can be reversed easily. The group keeps the unfinished project at the dinner table for the rest of the night, passing the palm strips across the table, taking turns weaving each row. “[Petate] is the sun and the moon, the day and the night; the physical and the spiritual,” Lorena tells me. And as I sit across the table from strangers, all of us putting handiwork into a communal band, it’s not difficult to see how that harmony carries into the alcohol we’re sharing— the land, the people, the bands, the rum. Day, night, physical, spiritual.

I find myself on the flight back to Los Angeles, laden with my rum bottle inscribed with my name and multitudinous gifts for friends, I can’t stop thinking about Lorena’s relationship to legacy. Lorena Vásquez, who worked her way into the position despite the difficulties of working alongside hundreds of men. Lorena Vásquez, who now encourages women to go for the highest positions they can in the alcohol industry because women have “more discipline and patience” than men and are “less inclined to smoke cigarettes,” (a habit which severely impedes the palette). Lorena Vásquez, who gets up before dawn every morning to do a Zoom exercise class and then spends the whole day drinking, talking, tasting, and chatting with strangers who want to learn more about Guatemala and Zacapa. Lorena Vásquez, who laughs when I ask her where she sees Zacapa moving in the forthcoming forty years. 

“I’ll still be here, first of all,” she winks, as if I’d suggested anything different. “I’m not going anywhere. And I’ll be here, in Guatemala, still innovating. In forty years, I’ll still be here, supporting my community.”