Although sugar cane was gradually losing its presence in the archipelago, Gran Canaria was always an island that kept sugar cane cultivation as a fundamental part of its economy. Perhaps the fact that he was born on the island is what always kept the destiny of Don Manuel Quevedo Alemán (1872-1968) linked to the sugar and rum tradition.
Quevedo’s family already owned the sugar factory in Bañaderos but even with that, at the age of 16, the young Manuel decided to set sail for the Americas to enrich his knowledge in Cuba and Puerto Rico. On his return to Europe in the early years of the 20th century, the island’s farms had already passed into the hands of large European landowners who saw the Canary Islands as a virgin and highly valued agricultural territory. This is how Mr. Manuel Quevedo Alemán began to work, first as a master sugar and rum maker for Mr. Juan M. Laecock in Gran Canaria and later for Enrique Figueroa Dasilva, who bought all of Laecock’s assets and moved them to Madeira, where Quevedo would manage the Portuguese financier’s industry and continue to accumulate experience in rum distilling until 1934.

It is true that the use of molasses can increase the volume of rum obtained, but the product ends up being simpler. On the other hand, making rum solely from the liquid extracted from the first press of the sugar cane gives it extra value. Greenish in colour, the cane juice, or guarapo, retains a high content of vegetable aromas and a pleasant sweetness typical of the cane. Don Manuel preferred the product over business: less rum but much richer in nuances, aromatics and intensity. The risky gamble had its effect: in little more than fifteen years, Ron Aldea went from nothing to a 200,000 litre production, proving that the idea of making a different kind of rum in the Islands was possible.

The beginnings on La Palma were not simple. Carmelo Quevedo had moved to the island, although his family remained in Gran Canaria. Running the business away from the family was not easy, even less so in those years when comuting from one island to the other was neither easy nor economical. But the effort paid off: the picturesque site chosen to establish the new distillery, on a steep cliff overlooking the sea, surrounded by sugar cane plantations, would not only become an icon of the Island and the Islands’ rum industry; it would also play a fundamental role in the process of elaboration and maturation of the brand’s new rums.
In 1969, the family finally reunited in La Palma and José Manuel Quevedo Hernández, son of Mr. Carmelo Quevedo, joined the business, keeping the family tradition alive and ensuring that the cane juice rum would continue to run through the Quevedo’s veins.