After surviving economic and political hardships that threatened to close this family-owned distillery in the last decade, Santa Teresa is on the path to international recognition for the quality of their rums.

The Santa Teresa Estate was founded in 1796 in a rich fertile valley about an hour east of Caracas. The distillery is proud to be the oldest licensed distillery in Venezuela and has license # D-1. The last two hundred years have seen wars, economic depression and the threat of nationalization but the Vollmer bothers who run this medium sized distillery continue to gain the respect of the industry and all of those who work with them.

The tall palm tree lined road that leads the visitor through the sugar cane fields of the Santa Teresa Estate to the distillery is reminiscent of the colonial past. A few buildings on the estate date to the early 19th century but the distillery itself was modernized in 1979. Every pump, heat exchanger, boiler, valve and tank is monitored by engineers who maintain watch over a modern control panel that takes up one whole side of a long room next to the quality control laboratory.

Molasses from a nearby sugar mill, owned by other Vollmer family members is extracted from sugar cane grown on the Santa Teresa Estate and other farms in the region. Once trucked to the distillery it is stored in large tanks until it is time to be distilled in one of the few continuous fermentation processes in the industry. Over three days yeast and water are added, in controlled quantities at controlled temperature, to the molasses. As the pH, temperature and density of the fermenting wash is monitored the latent sugar in the molasses is converted to alcohol and CO2, a gas which is collected, cleaned and sold to other industrial users.

Distillation is accomplished in a multiple-column still from which several product streams, of varying distillation purity, are collected, aged, blended and finally bottled.