Identified for lavish collaborations and worth tags to match, Dictador just lately ventured into even loftier territory with the introduction of its Totem assortment. Now, the Colombian rum model is releasing the second bottling within the vary, Dictador Mopa Mopa.
Dictador established the Totem assortment to protect cultural range, encourage traditionalism in artwork, and honor indigenous artisans and their strategies, courting again centuries. The model owns the world’s largest inventory of aged rum, as much as 45 years outdated, and desires to “[pioneer] aged rum for accumulating connoisseurs.”
The Dictador Mopa Mopa assortment demonstrates the artistry, method, and thought dedicated to the event of those collectible rum bottles. There are solely 360 bottles inside Mopa Mopa and every bottle has been hand-decorated by Colombian artists. The gathering represents this historic, historical artwork type however can also be an emblem of the love and respect these artisans have for his or her homeland and its wealthy tradition.
The inspiration for these bottles stems from the traditional custom of utilizing Mopa Mopa, a local South American phenolic resin, used for hundreds of years in cultural contexts by artisans within the area of Pasto, Colombia, to brighten ceremonial consuming cups often called ‘Qeros.’ The method includes a fancy cycle of manufacturing whereby sheets of versatile resin are extracted from timber of the genus Elaeagia, which grows in mountainous areas of western South America. That is finished with out harming the tree in the course of the course of.
The trek to gather the resin is at all times finished on foot and sometimes takes as much as 5 hours to succeed in the vacation spot level. Resin gatherers will then arrange campsites within the wilderness for 8 to fifteen days as they comb by patches of timber for viable harvest. In whole, the resin gatherers will gather between 6-9 kilos of Mopa Mopa which is able to then be bought to varnish masters at a central location nearer to city. Mopa Mopa is sacred due to the wonder it makes attainable but in addition due to the trouble concerned in sourcing it and the rarity of it – the harvest solely occurs twice a 12 months between Might and November.
As a result of the artistry of Mopa Mopa is so intricate and time-consuming, it can’t be automated for mass manufacturing. In consequence, the folks concerned are essential within the making of those limited-edition bottles. Like many indigenous processes, the harvesting of Mopa Mopa and the ancestral data of the Pasto varnish software course of is underneath risk of being misplaced as a consequence of deforestation and agricultural encroachment. It’s due to the eagerness and dedication of those native those who this artform has been saved alive.
The Dictador Mopa Mopa assortment is priced between at $3,600 and $4,800, relying on the bottle, and may be bought by way of the model’s on-line retailer.
In June, Dictador unveiled the most recent addition to its 2 Masters collection, Carlos 1.
