Smuggler Jim Spills the Secrets of Key West Trading Company
Key West Trading Co photo credit Key West Trading Co
Key West, home to smugglers, pirates, and free spirits is now home to a line of liquors paying homage to little-known historical figures in the area. Ironically, the producer of the line of spirits is something of a “smuggler” himself — Jim Martin, a 5th generation whiskey maker, is the first in his family to legally produce spirits, and he set up shop in Key West. His grandfather taught him to run liquor at nine years old and now he is producing alcohol that honors his family tradition and 1883 recipe.
Displayed at the “Oldest House Museum & Gardens'' on Duval Street is the Key West Wreckers Black List—a collection of names of people forbidden to hold a US Federal Wreckers License. Wreckers were the watchers of the reef line looking for ships in distress, “It was the wrecker’s job to rescue the crew, salvage the ship and its cargo.” (Florida State Parks) Temple Pent was first on the blacklist. He was charged with collusion in 1853 for running a ship ashore to gain financial reward. This mistake marred the reputation of The Old Squire as a trusted lighthouse keeper and territorial senator. The rum, produced by Key West Trading Company, bears his tale as well as a photograph of his actual signature.
Smuggler Jim’s spirits are gaining recognition beyond Key West. In his first year, 2018, he captured three awards: Bronze in The San Francisco World Spirits Competition, Silver in the Sip Awards, and Silver in The Las Vegas Global Spirits Awards. 2021 will see the launch of Death in the Afternoon Absinthe, a nod to famous Key West personality Ernest Hemingway, as well as a gin infused with native Florida citrus. They are in local liquor stores and bars and can be ordered online through Cask Cartel. I had the privilege of chatting with Smuggler Jim about the inspiration for his business, Key West Trading Company, “Purveyors of Fine Whiskies and Spirits.”
Tell me about your family’s notorious history
Jim Martin, aka “Smuggler Jim” (SJ): When I was nine years old, my grandfather took me to the still house and showed me how to make liquor. We started in 1883 and have never been caught. That's why I have the tagline, ‘Key West Trading Company is notoriously good for not getting caught.’ We were always politically connected, so if there was going to be a raid, we would know before it happened. I'm the first person in our family to make liquor legally.
How did you land in Key West from Kentucky?
SJ: I was living in Dallas Fort Worth for 17 years, working in the corporate world. I traveled the globe, but there is no place like Key West. It is a simpler lifestyle. There's no place in the United States like Key West. It's almost like not being in the U.S. It's not even like being in Florida. There are so many hidden little alleys, quirky stories, and places you wouldn’t even know existed.
And then, of course, I wanted to bring my heritage, and it helps that Key West has more bars per capita than any other city. If you're going to sell alcohol, this is the place to do that. We have 366 liquor licenses on a six square mile island, and I can deliver whiskey on a scooter. In fact, that is my transportation everywhere. Sometimes I have to ask myself if this is a real thing, am I really delivering whiskey on a scooter right now on an island?
The real question was, how do I bring my family heritage, making whiskey, to a tropical climate? Rum is everywhere here, and people like their tropical drinks while on vacation. So, I asked myself, how am I going to bring whiskey to the tropics, and does that even make any sense? I started trying a bunch of different processes to make the whiskey lighter. That is how I came to the TerrePURE process.
Distillery photo credit key West Trading Company
Tell me about the TerrePURE process
SJ: It was invented by O.Z. Tyler who liked 12-year-old Scotch but didn’t like the waiting period for proper aging. It uses low-frequency acoustic energy (ultrasonic energy and oxygenation) to simulate the changing of seasons, and variance of temperature needed to age properly. Coincidentally, a distillery in my hometown of Owensboro, Kentucky used TerrePURE.
I licensed that process to make my whiskey. We aged it in a barrel for one year and one day, so it is classified as bourbon. Then we run it through the TerrePURE process which ages the equivalent of three more years and 10 hours. So we ended up with a four year aged whiskey in one year and two days. It’s effective. It doesn't sit in a barrel and pick up all those carcinogens from the charring. It ends up being lighter, and fruity—very, very similar to a rum, even though it's a whiskey, so I can substitute my whiskey in any rum drink.
Do you make the spirits onsite? Could you give me some insight into your process and how you have kept the family recipe in the mix?
SJ: I'm making everything in my hometown at the former Green River Distillery that was renamed for O.Z. Tyler, TerrePURE inventor, (and recently resurrected as Green River again). I can't make bourbon or whiskey in tropical climates. You need cold winters and hot summers in order to age whiskey. If you put whiskey in a barrel down here in Key West, and you opened the barrel after a year, it wouldn't be aged at all. You want the largest variance of temperature. Then there is the water. Kentucky sits on top of the largest limestone formation in the United States. Limestone filters magnesium, calcium, and iron out of the water. You have water perfect for distillation. That's why moonshiners use the water coming right out of the ground for distillation. If you age whiskey with iron in the water, it will turn black, and ruin the whiskey. Kentucky has what is called ‘sweet water.’ It's some of the best water in the United States.
How has Key West Trading Company’s Bourbon Whiskey made a name in a town of tropical drinks?
SJ: There are a lot of things I’ve learned along the way since everything before me was done illegally. Distribution was foreign to me; we didn't have distributors. There are two different forms of distribution, the push, and the pull. The push is where you put a bunch of money behind it. The distributors push it out and saturate the market. Then hopefully, people pick up on the branding and start drinking it. Pull is when you convert a customer directly with your branding. They go into a place and ask for your product. The customer pulls it through distribution. I took the pull approach.
From the beginning, it was a grassroots effort. We never paid a penny for any social media marketing, but we have over 70,000 followers on Facebook and 20,000 on Instagram. We sold the old Key West lifestyle and created a social media sensation. When people come down to Key West, they go into the bars and pull, they ask specifically for our product. It's been a challenge because we're not a multi-million dollar corporation or a giant liquor conglomerate that has deep pockets. Every dollar counts—it's a real dollar. I started with the bourbon whiskey because that’s my heritage and created a cult-like following to get this thing going and spread it to the bars and local liquor stores. We're 110 miles away from Walmart. We're closer to Cuba than Walmart. It’s about creating that ‘live like a local experience.’
Temple Pent's Revenge credit Pashur Illustration
What inspired the names and labels of your spirits?
SJ: Behind every good spirit is a good story. That's what I've always been taught. People need a good story that allows you to escape for a moment. I wanted to create the vodka in the spirit of the Wreckers. I am a history buff and wanted to bring some of that Key West history back.
Temple Pent’s Revenge was made in the spirit of one of the early wreckers. He was the lighthouse keeper. He was a ship's captain. He was the first senator from Monroe County when Florida became a state. He had an amazing reputation, and he was also in the wrecking business. There's a document at the Oldest House that is the Wreckers Black List. Temple Pent got caught up in this scam. They ran a ship aground on purpose, so they could wreck it, and salvage its bounty, but they got caught. Pent was convicted of collusion. He's the number one name on the list.
If we hadn't put that on our label on the bottle and brought the story back, 99.9% of people would never know who he was or, even think to ask. It would just be some obscure document you see in a small historical building on an island in Florida. If we don't preserve the past, we're going to lose it.
What is a visit to Key West Trading Company like?
SJ: We're trying to connect with old Key West, help visitors live like a local, live like Hemingway and other historically important residents. For example, you can come to Key West and walk in Hemingway’s footsteps, drink where he drank, and now you can drink the exact alcohol he drank, absinthe. We did a bunch of research and found when he came back from France he couldn’t get his absinthe because it had been outlawed in the U.S. for 95 years. He started getting absinthe from Havana, Cuba, and we tracked down the exact distillery and brand he was drinking back then. We found what recipe they were using, which was a Pernod-base from the 1800s. We recreated the exact recipe, and it has been approved at full strength to sell.
Our initiatives from the beginning have been about honoring the community we are a part of. All of our signs and displays are made by local Keys artists. Everything is individual and unique, like Key West. We spend our money supporting our neighbors. We stick to what drew me here, old-school Key West lifestyle. We are part of this crazy town with all of these stories. It's real things with real documents, real history and real people, real characters. It already exists.