Today we’d like to introduce you to Paul Menta.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I was born in Philadelphia and in 1976 I was 10 years old and fell in love with history during the bicentennial and found my superhero that would help guide some of my future Ben Franklin. After some not-so-great growing pains and not being invited back to public school, I ended up in a quaker school and those teachers changed my life forever. They also introduced me to Key West, where all that energy I had could be used in the ocean And being a bit weird and Creative was welcome thereby likewise people.
I love spending my time in the ocean, Kiteboarding calls Spearfishing, or just swimming for exercise. I decided to go to culinary school, as I learned to cook from my grandmother and it was my relief valve for relaxing and how many great memories were developed. I travel and studied abroad and learned a lot of classical cooking, but learned more in South America on really how to utilize food and make the most out of everything.
I put my heart and soul into my cooking and created my own style keeping the elements of the ocean and seafood that is locally sourced as part of my credo. After being an executive chef at restaurants, I opened my own restaurants over the years, had a fish market and had good success and enjoyed it immensely, but after 25 years in the business I wanted to do something different, but what could be needed? I remember that I learned how to distill when I was in culinary school, and there was never any Distillery in Key West so I dropped everything and took on the biggest risk of my life and went for it, and here I am 10 years later to Distillery being absolutely unique and everything being chef distilled.
I still enjoy Kiteboarding as I’ve been a sponsor Kiteboarder by Cabrinha kites for the last 23 years, giving to the community, raising money for families, and overall helping out and letting kids experience the ocean or things to drive me every day.
People ask me how I can do so many things in one day, but I’m way too busy and I just answer them it just makes me way too satisfied and that’s the way I wanna live my life, working for a bit until the wind blows it’s on the fish seem like they’re biting, then leaving work and going out and enjoy the ocean are the things that matter, then going back to work and finishing up may be in between trying to help something in the community that’s needed.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
Nothing is ever easy, anybody who expects it to be that way must have whole Lotta money that they had inherited , which I didn’t and I still don’t think it’s easy. As for me, I’ve worked for everything I have, I’ve worked very hard but the one thing that I’ve learned whether it was cooking, working, water sports, or doing things in general in life, sometimes you have to do things wrong and accept your failure as a stepping stone to your success.
Success is only in our own mind, for me it’s the gratification that I’ve succeeded in doing the success the way I thought it should be done, but it is so important to learn from when things don’t go right, once you can put your ego aside and your feelings and analyze what you weren’t doing right it takes you to a whole next level, I’ve had to incorporate that in my life with many successes and failures and obstacles that were thrown at me. I like to succeed; I don’t need success.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Chef Distilled – Key West Legal Rum?
As a Distiller, you tend to follow tradition and what is always been done. When you throw a chef into the mix, let’s say things get a little disrupted. I wanted to make a quality product, but the best local ingredients and homemade extracts, and special flavors would represent Key West and my style. Sometimes you have to be the idiot in the room, I was called this at an early convention when I asked about the idea of” salt curing barrels ” in the ocean the gentleman said we don’t do that.
For me when somebody says that, I want to ask the question why? The response was it just doesn’t work it’s an idiotic idea. This for me is always the challenge as a chef when we cure something, such as salmon or beef the salt to draw out all the freshwater which is a bacterium, until we’re left with a very strong flavor, no bacteria, and something that is stable in the everyday environment. So, I fill my rum barrels with ocean water, then dry them out and the salt curing opens up the wood in the staves and lets the rum get to the flavor much faster and more flavorful in a shorter period of time, plus it naturally adjusts the pH level to help smooth it out.
The base of your rum is everything, or what you would call the clear rum. This is the mom of the distillery and dictates all flavors that you will make, so it has to be done right, most people use molasses and I wanted something that was equivalent to extra-virgin olive oil in the sugar world. I found in Florida locally to me Demerara sugar. A very high Mineral More flavorful sugar that comes out of our limestone Aquifer and has notes of butterscotch, pear, and floral scents.
We probably make 12 different styles of rum handmade every day in our distillery, which we had bottle labels and take off a lot of pride and put a lot of passion into what people get to taste that is smooth, flavorful with no additives, and clean and we enjoyed in moderation is welcome any celebration.
We opened our location in the old Coca-Cola bottling factory, some definite karma going on there with rum and Coke. As we work every day we give free tours of the distillery, and people get to be emerged in an actual working blue-collar Distillery, no matter if waters splashing on the floor, rum dripping out of the stills, it’s an experience they won’t forget and we like them to be educated and see what small craft is all about and what local really means.
Do we make the best rum in the world I think that’s the most horrible statement somebody can make, every region has something different and special offers with craft, we do have the best rum that you will taste in our region in Key West in the Florida Keys, at least we think so and that’s what our customers and told us?
Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
The industry is changing slightly because we are becoming more educated and using natural processes to create other flavors in lower-proof alcohols that can be enjoyed.
Trends premixed canned drinks are really going along but I feel they have too much bad stuff in them that will make you feel horrible the next day, so we are working on some natural products that people can enjoy. Rum is now being paired at with foods for dinners, we even make the only sparkling rum in the United States and possibly the world that I know of, at 20 proofs using the Champange’s method it’s an amazing burst of flavor as the yeast is fermented in the bottle.
We have also started using our methods in Kentucky for bourbon which is under high demand but doing it and small barrels and bringing out more of the flavors that are savory
Contact Info:
- Website: Keywestlegalrum.com
- Instagram: @Keywestlegalrum
- Facebook: Keywestdistillery
- Twitter: @chefdistilled
Image Credits
Keywestlegalrum
