Top 10 Distilleries in Ecuador
Ecuador sits on the equator, giving the country its name and providing its distillers with a unique set of environmental conditions. Sugarcane grows throughout the coastal lowlands and the subtropical foothills of the Andes, and has been distilled in Ecuador since colonial times. The country's traditional spirit is punta or puntas — a raw, high-proof sugarcane distillate produced across rural areas and consumed locally, often without formal commercial status. A step above puntas in refinement is aguardiente de caña, the broader category of sugarcane spirits that encompasses everything from rough regional firewater to more carefully made artisanal expressions.
Ecuador is also one of the world's most biodiverse countries, packing four distinct ecological zones — coast, Andes, Amazon, and Galápagos Islands — into a territory smaller than many individual U.S. states. This botanical richness is beginning to attract serious craft gin producers who recognise that Ecuador's plant diversity represents an unparalleled ingredient library. Check the map to see Ecuador's distilleries plotted against the country's remarkable landscape, from the Pacific coast cacao plantations to the high paramo grasslands of the Andes.
1. Ron San Miguel, Milagro, Guayas Province
San Miguel is Ecuador's most widely distributed rum and aguardiente producer, with its main operations in Milagro in the Guayas Province of the coastal lowlands — a region whose very name (Milagro means miracle) reflects its extraordinary agricultural productivity. The distillery produces a range of spirits from locally grown sugarcane, including aged rum, white aguardiente, and cane-based vodka. San Miguel's aged rum expressions have received increasingly positive attention from South American spirits critics, and the brand has been investing in premium product development to position Ecuadorian rum alongside more established Caribbean and Colombian producers in the export market.
2. Destilería Zhumir, Azuay Province
Zhumir takes its name from the Zhumir River in the Azuay Province of southern Ecuador and is one of the country's most storied traditional spirit producers. The distillery has been producing cane-based spirits in the humid Andean foothills since at least the mid-twentieth century, and its products are deeply embedded in local culture in the Cuenca region. Zhumir aguardiente is produced from local sugarcane, fermented with natural yeasts, and distilled in copper pot stills before being either sold young or aged in oak. The aged expressions develop caramel, vanilla, and light wood notes that make them accessible to consumers familiar with aged Latin American rum.
3. Cristal Distillery, Guayas Province
Cristal is one of Ecuador's larger commercial spirits operations, producing sugarcane spirits and vodka for the domestic mass market. The distillery works with continuous column still distillation to achieve the high volumes required for mass-market distribution across Ecuador's coastal and highland provinces. While Cristal does not compete in the craft or premium segment, its operations represent the industrial backbone of Ecuador's licensed spirits sector and are an important part of understanding how the country's formal spirits economy functions alongside the extensive informal production of traditional puntas.
4. Gin Andino, Quito, Pichincha Province
Gin Andino is one of Ecuador's most visible craft gin brands, produced in the capital Quito at an altitude of approximately 2,850 metres above sea level — making it one of the highest-elevation gin distilleries in the world. The distillery uses a wheat spirit base and incorporates botanicals from across Ecuador's ecological zones: galangal-like spices from the Amazon, rose petals from the Andes rose industry (Ecuador is one of the world's largest cut flower exporters), lemongrass from the coast, and juniper sourced from both domestic and international origins. The resulting gin is fragrant, complex, and distinctly non-European in character.
5. Hacienda El Carmen, Imbabura Province
Hacienda El Carmen is a sugarcane estate in the subtropical Chota Valley in Imbabura Province, where the presence of an Afro-Ecuadorian community with deep-rooted cane farming traditions gives the local spirits production a particular historical and cultural dimension. The hacienda produces guarapo (fresh cane juice) alongside artisanal aguardiente and is working toward formal recognition and distribution of its spirits. The Chota Valley's warm, sheltered microclimate produces sugarcane of notable sweetness, and the distillate retains more aromatic complexity from the cane than industrial column-still spirits. Hacienda El Carmen represents the heritage end of Ecuadorian cane spirits.
6. Amazon Spirits, Napo Province
Amazon Spirits is a craft operation established in Ecuador's Napo Province, in the western Amazon basin. The distillery focuses on spirits made from Amazonian raw materials, including fermented cacao, native palm fruits, and sugarcane grown in the jungle clearings of the Napo River valley. The operation works with indigenous community cooperatives to source ingredients sustainably and provides a share of revenue to those communities as part of a fair-trade model. The spirits produced are experimental by nature — some made from ingredients never previously used commercially in distillation — and are sold primarily through Ecuadorian specialty retailers and international craft spirits distributors.
7. Ron Dos Hemisferios, Guayas Province
Dos Hemisferios is an Ecuadorian spirits brand that has positioned itself explicitly in the international export market, with premium aged rum as its flagship product. The name references Ecuador's straddling of the equator. The rum is produced from high-quality molasses derived from coastal Ecuadorian sugarcane and aged in American white oak barrels in a controlled warehouse environment. Dos Hemisferios has achieved export distribution in the United States and several European markets and has been reviewed by rum specialists who note its accessibility and consistent quality. The brand represents Ecuador's most concerted attempt to compete at the premium end of the aged rum category.
8. Botánica Destilería, Cuenca, Azuay Province
Botánica is a craft gin and herbal spirits producer based in Cuenca, Ecuador's third-largest city and a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its colonial architecture. The distillery draws on the botanical market at Cuenca's indigenous Feria Libre market — one of the largest indigenous markets in South America — as a source of inspiration and raw materials, working with market vendors to source fresh herbs, dried flowers, and spices that are then macerated or vapour-infused during distillation. The distillery's flagship gin incorporates cedrón (lemon verbena), arrayán (South American myrtle), and tomate de árbol, all sourced from the Azuay market. Botánica sells through the Cuenca restaurant and hospitality trade as well as directly.
9. Paramo Gin, Latacunga, Cotopaxi Province
Paramo Gin takes its name and its botanical inspiration from the páramo ecosystem — the high-altitude grasslands above the tree line in the Ecuadorian Andes, characterised by distinctive frailejón plants, cushion bogs, and extraordinary endemic flora. The distillery, located near Latacunga in the shadow of the Cotopaxi volcano, sources botanicals from the páramo with the permission of local conservation authorities and processes them carefully to capture their distinctive aromatic qualities. The result is a gin with an earthy, resinous, high-altitude character unlike any produced elsewhere. Production is small and the brand is sold primarily to visitors and through high-end Quito restaurants.
10. Casa Mila, Salinas, Bolívar Province
Casa Mila is a family-run distillery in the rural Salinas de Tomabela area in Bolívar Province, an Andean community known for its cooperativist economy and community enterprises. The operation produces artisanal sugarcane spirit using traditional methods, with fermentation in open wooden vats using natural ambient yeasts and distillation in a simple copper alembic. Casa Mila's spirit is sold to visitors and through local cooperative networks, and represents the kind of small-scale production that has sustained rural Andean communities for generations. Efforts are underway to formalise production standards and achieve broader legal distribution for the operation's output.