The gorillas of the Virunga National Park have their own rum
In the African mountains of Virunga National Park the last eastern gorillas live. inhabiting an immense chain of volcanoes adorned with bamboo and breathing fog, the silverbacks they resist like favorite children of the jungle.
It was the face of one of them that appeared on the retina of Edward of the Friar on a sea day. “Suddenly, the image of the gorilla came to me. And I knew I had to start there ”. It was the definitive push to an idea that had been around for a while.
“I wanted to propose a project right from the start. I love the world of plant essences, how to turn them into alcohol and connect them with us ”. The second leg of the concept could not be other than one of his great passions: animals. “The brand rests on the mission of help the animals, and to start doing it from the very beginning”.
A different way to save gorillas
Thus was born a complex project developed between Madrid, New York and Guatemala who sought to conceive a rum deeply connected with the gorilla, which merges us with our ancestors from the African jungle. KONG , the rainforest rum, has succeeded.
For this, the collaboration with two of the best NGOs in the world it was essential. Is about Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund and of Gorilla Rehabilitation and Conservation Education Center (GRACE) , who have been working for 50 years in the surveillance of more than 700 square kilometers of jungle and the recovery of Grauer's gorillas. “For almost a year and a half we worked to get Dian Fossey and GRACE they got into in the project. It was a process long and bureaucratic , but they charm . Without them we would not have started. Have been essentials ”.
A part of the price of the bottle goes to the gorilla Salvation, "and of ourselves ”, as they emphasize from KONG. And just as important as the funds is the work of communication.
“At Dian Fossey they love how we are working on gorilla Promotion, in communicating the remaining copies, in publicizing its reality … In fact, through our website you can donate directly, no need to buy the rum.”
The first thing that strikes KONG's eyes, what makes him stand out from the rest of the fellow liquors in the windows, is the bottle . A bottle that retains that condition of bowl until he gives away the last drop of rum. From then on, it's a design object that reminds us of where we come from
Jungle Flavored Rum
It is a white size with head shape of a mountain gorilla, which conveys the work and watch out of the team. “It took us a few 700 days to finish the head. Due to its shape, it is very complex and requires a technical development very important. In many places they told us that It was not possible make it.”
they visited four countries in the process, until they got what they wanted: to amplify KONG's strength with a handcrafted blend of rocks of magmatic origin , “of a time older than man in which the Gorilla was the only king”. A compact mineral compound, a touch of volcanic rock reminiscent of the home of the gorillas of Virunga.
Everything in KONG makes sense, everything is for a reason , everything fulfills its function. This was one of the premises to be respected, and hence a liqueur with evocation of jungle settings. “There was a long process to get the rum, because we wanted something special ”, they tell us.
Finally they came to a golden distillate from ingredients common to gorillas and humans: herbs, celery, young bamboo shoots , eucalyptus, blackberry, banana and, of course, sugar cane. “When we discovered that gorillas are given sugar cane in the recovery process, having chosen rum as a liquor took on all its meaning”.
A sense that was going in the right direction, because it has led him to win the Double Gold for Best Spiced Rum in the Madrid Rum Festival , the most important in Spain, held in May. But soon they will have to establish a different category, because "we have created a new typology of rum . More than spicy it is arboreal A rum from the jungle, 100% natural and of the highest quality."
Carving this head took 700 days