metronews.ca
By Melita Kuburas
Manuel Campos bought a house in Mexico, but he doesn’t like fishing and isn’t much of a golfer. So he turned to booze.
Not beer or tequila — the veterinary scientist and food fanatic wanted to create an artisan liqueur that would showcase locally sourced ingredients, and give farmers in Mazatlan a new market for their fruits.
In 2010 Campos, who immigrated to Canada in the 1980s and has lived in Calgary since 2001, launched a distillery business called Onilikan with a group of his friends from Canada as co-investors.
Onilikan’s operations are headquartered in Mazatlan, a port city in Sinaloa state, which runs lengthwise like a boot along Mexico’s northern Pacific coast and is known for abundant produce: papayas grow year-round; 28 kinds of mangos can bear fruit in the summer season; and hibiscus is used in everything from salad dressings, to dessert glazes.
“We wanted to add value to the products that are there, which in turn will help the farmers,” said Campos, about the five couples (three of whom are from Calgary) who invested in Onilikan and bought houses in Mazatlan.
Campos, 60, loves mango, which he said catalyzes in a way that brings all other flavours together. For Onilikan’s first batch of booze, two tons of frozen mangos were sent to The Okanagan in B.C., with the distillation process overseen by craft spirits guru Frank Deiter.
“We didn’t want to do it blindly. We wanted to find a way of doing it that could capture the aromas of the fruit,” Campos said of the process, which was a success.
But getting business off the ground didn’t go down as smoothly as shots of the Onilikan brandy.
Campos’s family lives in Mazatlan, including his sister Victoria who works as a manager at the Onilikan shop — a bright yellow and orange building surrounded by cacti and agave plants located in the city’s “golden zone,” a touristy strip dotted with restaurants and hotels.
The location for the shop was strategic, meant to attract foot traffic. But about three weeks after they opened the store in 2011, major cruise lines stopped docking, listing crime and security as a concern. The following year, Canadians read gruesome reports of an elevator beating in which Calgarian Sheila Nabb was attacked while vacationing. She survived, and a man was caught and charged. Locals and expats insisted the incidents were isolated and that the city was safe — but traffic diminished tremendously.
“We’ve been in survival mode,” said Campos, about the impact the drop in tourism had on the business.
“That prompted us to start exporting faster than we thought,” he added.
Onilikan has distribution in Arizona and some parts of Canada, including B.C. and Calgary, which he expects to expand nationally in the next six months.
This year, thing have started to turn around for Mazatlan: 442,618 international visitors are expected in the city by the end of 2014 — a 31 per cent increase from the previous year. A crime crackdown led to the arrest of notorious kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman in February. Local authorities also invested tens of millions of dollars into security efforts and beautification projects.
And the ships have started calling again.
This year, 35 boats from major cruise lines like Norwegian, Holland America and Carnival came to the city, and in 2015 that number will nearly double to 69, according to the Port Authority of Mazatlan. Hopes are high, both for Onilikan business owners and the locals, many of whom depend on tourism for their livelihood.
Like the other Canadian investors in Onilikan, Campos tries to spend six months of the year in Mexico, and he said the family business is helping his three grandchildren connect with their Mexican culture.
“We give them roots. They go to the farm, and they pick mangoes, and so it gives them a connection to the community and the place. For me, all of that is very important,” he said.
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