Running The Rum
The stills, the water tanks, the machinery are in full mode, churning away for 14 hours, six days a week. With Paul Menta at the helm, the Key West First Legal Rum Distillery is producing 420 bottles (750 ml) of 80-proof rum a week.
You can stop by the 2,500 square foot building at 105 Simonton St. and purchase a limit of two bottles a year for $27.95 including tax. If you wish, Menta will even autograph the bottles for you. The bulk of the product, however, will be distributed to local restaurants and bars, he said.
During its open hours of 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., the distillery is collecting moderate but a steady stream of tourists who, if of legal age, can sip the product as well as browse through the establishment, which includes a bar, historical pictures and plaques as well as souvenirs and books for sale. Everything, including the distillery room, is neat as a pin.
“This has been like being on a hamster wheel,” said Menta, as he broke from an hour telephone conversation with state licensing people one recent early afternoon and discussed what all has gone into his project. Much of it obviously has been getting local, state and federal approval. “The state wants everything,” he said.
“If you cause trouble here,” said bartender Cassie McGee, pointing to her area, “we call the Key West police. Do it in there,” pointing to the distillery room, “we call the feds, the FBI.”
Menta received the distillery license on Nov. 15, but the label application wasn’t approved until Dec. 21. It was the culmination of a plan that was three years in the making.
“We did our first business plan three years ago, even got partners,” recalled Menta. “Then we tore up the plan and started over.” Chris Holland, who operates Ibis Bay on North Roosevelt and has become a mentor to Menta, told him tearing up the first plan was the smartest thing he had done. “I have two gurus,” said Menta. “Chris Holland and Tom Sawyer. Tom has guided me forever, opened doors for me in Key West.”
His business partner is Tony Mantia from southwestern Ohio. “He and his wife Jill put my ideas together,” said Menta. “I had an idea how I wanted the bar and the attraction area to look. They put it together. They built it in their warehouse, built the bar and had it all shipped down here.”
Besides McGee, Steven “Doc” Pike is Menta’s only other employee. Menta, who will be 48 on March 1, is single with a 20-year-old son, Paul IV. He grew up in Philadelphia and attended a Quaker school. When he was 15, the Quakers sent him to Key West for a two-week trip, thinking it might be a place where he could adapt. “It was a good fit,” he recalls. “I didn’t get along well with concrete. I knew that Key West was the place I wanted to be.”
After attending a community college, he graduated from the Philadelphia Restaurant School and soon headed to Europe, where he spent two years cooking with chefs. By 1988, he was living in Key West, leaving for summers in other areas, such as South America, improving on his talents as a chef. In Key West, he was at the Uptown Diner in 1998, worked with Tommy Daniels at Beamonte’s, as a chef at Sunset Key, at the Grand Café in 2006. In 2008, he owned the Cuban Coffee Queen. From 2010 until late 2013, he was at Amigo’s Tortilla Bar.
“You’ll notice there’s a six-year gap in there,” Menta said he listed places he had been. “From 1999 to 2006, I went on tour as a professional kite boarder.” He became so engrossed with that sport that, as one of its pioneers, he wrote the “how to” book.
But now he’s gone back to roots, what he learned in 10th grade science class at the Quaker school: how to distill rum. The distillery business has come a long ways since the days of prohibition, which lasted from Jan. 16, 1920 until the 21st amendment was ratified on Dec. 5, 1933. If that history interests you, you’ll find that, too, at the Simonton street building. Stories, pictures, murals and artifacts are also part of Menta’s business.
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