Hemingway Distillery — Local services in Key West

TLDR: Rum is fantastic! I will be buying a bottle. Don’t just drop in; visit website, sign up for tour and/or tasting in advance otherwise experience may be underwhelming.

Thanks to the owner for the acknowledgment of this review. Sorry for scant details, at first. It’s rare for me to give non-five-stars and I want my feedback to be worthwhile.

I do want to acknowledge that part of my poor experience with my tasting here had to do with circumstances outside their control. That being said, here is a suggestion and a complaint/frustration:

Add a few stools near the bar (for tastings/tour use only) for customers, like me, who have significant foot pain. (I should note that I did not ask for seating, so it’s possible it would have been provided.)

My main complaint was that everything felt rushed. Tours were unavailable, unless scheduled days in advance. Visiting a place like this, without knowing it should be planned ahead, I’d like to take my time and soak in the experience. However, I felt rushed to sign in/up for experiences, we were rushed into a semi-chaotic group of other tasters, with little explanation of the tasting process or why we couldn’t just take places at the bar, with safe distance from each other. It also felt like the server providing the tastings was rushing to get through it (she was very friendly and chatted afterward, but I guess I was just underwhelmed by this tasting experience compared to the many others I’ve been to).

All in all, I still would recommend visiting here, but it isn’t a “must” for me. I do hope to visit again for a full tour and maybe even the ghost experience which seems kind of silly and forced, but makes sense given the area…and I’m a sucker for things like that. Also, buy their rum, because it...

Hi all,

My partner and I went to Papa’s Pilar distillery around 2:03 pm with our friends because the last time we went to Key West, we throughly enjoyed the rum we tasted and bought. We knew when we came to Key West we wanted to come and buy more. We encouraged our friends to come in with us to try the rum and potentially buy some rum for themselves. When we entered the air conditioned tasting room, we walked up to the host and he asked us what we are looking for. My partner said “we would like to do a tasting”. The host immediately said “we are not doing tastings anymore today. You were late by three mins”. The host immediately walked away and we were like wow! We totally understand we were late for the tasting and that’s acceptable, but to walk away instead of saying what they can offer (like rum for sale) was very rude. The host just decided to not talk to us anymore. Due to the host’s attitude, we were immediately turned off to buy Papa Pilar’s rum and even to stay in the building. We always say that service really makes or breaks our reason to buy.

Their website didn’t say when they are having tastings and our group wanted to do all the museums like the Hemingway Museum and Truman’s Little White House before we started drinking to get the history of Key West. Obviously we were very disappointed by the attitude of the employee and it turn us off.

Fortunately, there is another distillery nearby that we went to that offers a tour and tastings before we bought. For those who are looking for great employees who have a passion to teach about the rum that they serve, I encourage you to go to Key West’s First Legal...

In October of 2018 my girlfriend and I from CT and a couple friends met up in Key West to celebrate her birthday. Anxious about turning the big "4-0", we figured we'd ease the pain by being in the happiest town we knew of, (KW). After breakfast at Pepe's we strolled into the Papa Pilar Rum Distillery on a whim and were greeted by the very inviting staff who very graciously offered a tasting. It was way before noon but when you're in the Keys, that's perfectly acceptable (haha). They heard about the special occasion and completely turned this somewhat bummer of a birthday for her into one of the absolute BEST, most MEMORABLE days we have ever had in the 19 yrs of us being together. Tastings, Radio station live interview with the birthday girl, Happy hour by Capt Kirk at the hotel we were staying, Tour of the distillery, etc. We didn't want the day to end, despite the whole "40" thing. It was incredible and we owe it all to the love and warmth we received from the Papa Pilar staff. THANK YOU from the bottom of our hearts to all involved for your sincere kindness and generosity!! You're more than a rum distillery, You're our friends and we love you for being such great people. We will never forget that special day and we'll be seeing you guys and girls soon and will never drink any other brand of Rum, as it is by far the highest quality Rum on the market today. (Took 4 bottles home on the airplane, so that should last us until our next visit.) My girlfriend still looks 20 (not 40) and had her best birthday ever!

Thanks and Love...