Cuban American Couple in West Palm Debuts Zarova Vodka

They started with conventional careers in Cuba. Rojas studied finance and accounting and Plasencia studied engineering, both in Cuba, where they met in Havana. They married and in 1998, the United States opened enrollment for at least 20,000 visas from Cuba.

That’s when the “lottery,” like lightening, struck from the sky. Plasencia won the visa lottery in 2002 that led to their emigration and life as entrepreneurs.

“If you won $10 million in a lottery today, how would you feel? It’s the same feeling,” Rojas said recently in West Palm Beach. “We were in our 20s. We didn’t know what we would do.”

Plasencia said they traveled to West Palm Beach, where some of his family had settled, beginning a new life and eventually a new business, assembling a portfolio of properties.

“In Cuba, if you win the lottery to come here, it’s amazing,” he added.

Nearly 25 years later, they have become a Cuban-American success story, not “because” of luck, but labors of love – first flipping houses, then assembling a large real estate portfolio, and now launching a high-end vodka brand, Zarova, carving out a niche in Florida with plans to begin selling in New York.

“We did 3,000 bottles of each color,” Rojas said. “To keep it a luxury, it has to be a small batch.”

Their luxury vodka, produced in limited editions, is distilled eight times (in Fort Myers) and filtered with technology designed to purify. It retails for just under $100, is Kosher, sugar-free, non-GMO, additive-free and vegan, they say.

The Black Bottle vodka is crafted from American corn; the Blue Bottle is made from 100% blue agave from Jalisco, Mexico; and the White Bottle is distilled from grapes from France’s Champagne region.

“Agave is trendy, so we wanted to do it,” Rojas said. “More people are drinking and getting involved with agave.”

The name is designed to fit a luxury brand.

“We wanted a good name that sounded Palm Beachy, Russian or luxury,” Rojas said.

The vodkas are presented in beautiful bottles, and boxes, where packaging is part of the product. “It’s not sold in a typical bottle,” Rojas added. “A perfume factory made the bottle and the box.”

While most vodkas typically are mixed with other drinks, this vodka doesn’t need to be.

“We call it the sipping vodka,” Plasencia said. “It’s smooth.”

The married couple, who grew up in Los Palacios, Pinar del Río, met in college.

“We are from the same town. We worked in the same town,” Rojas said. “But we met in Havana.”

Plasencia worked in the beverage industry in Cuban sugar mills, and Rojas worked in hospitality and brand building at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba and fragrance house Suchel Camacho.

Plasencia learned distillation from master rum makers, ranging from heat control to fermentation cycles, column purity and patience.

“When I graduated, I went to the sugar factory. In Cuba, sugar factories have wine distilleries inside,” Plasencia said. “Distillation and fermentation were part of my work in Cuba.”

After winning the visa lottery, they settled in West Palm Beach, surrounded by and gradually learning English.

“We don’t speak perfectly English, but we have the opportunity here to do what we want and build a brand,” Rojas said. “We can do it here. This is America.”

Even before they spoke English, they were cleaning places such as Saks Fifth Avenue in Palm Beach.

“We started working,” she said. “We took a lot of classes and we took risks.”

Plasencia’s family was in the cleaning business with 13 employees, which they joined, before selling the cleaning company and buying houses to fix and flip.

Then one of his uncles leant them money which they used to buy land in Fort Myers, which doubled in value quickly. “It was a crazy time,” Rojas said.

They got licensed as real estate agents in 2007, using connections and access to do deals for others and themselves.

“We were part of the team who took care of the bank-owned properties,” she said, noting they bought foreclosed properties. “We started investing, taking classes and learning how to invest in real estate.”

As real estate agents, they have a large client list, but focus primarily on residences used for profit.

“We have a big list of investors,” Rojas said. “They don’t care about the color of the wall. If they’re going to make a profit, they’re in.”

Zarovka is sold online at zarovavodka.com, Florida liquor stores, nightclubs, hotels, and as far as the Hard Rock Ventana restaurant in the Dominican Republic.

“In Cuba, if somebody pays for a T-shirt or whatever $500, it’s too much,” Plasencia said of the absence of a luxury market there. “This is the salary for a doctor all year in Cuba.”

He studied AI and also studied business in a special program in Scotland in 2022, including “how to make a luxury company.”

“We made Zarovka for gifts,” Plasencia said of bottes, boxes and quality vodka. “Some people buy it as a gift.”

They have been giving bottles to celebrities such as Martha Stewart, who agreed to let them take her picture, which is on their website.

The Cuban community has supported this launch, including online Cuban publications which generated interest and income. “It went viral,” Rojas said.

They have two children, Alex, 12, and Analy, nine, and are busy living the life that the lottery ticket made possible with a lot of work.

“This is the American dream. We never thought we could go as far as we are,” Rojas said. “We keep the work and the office and the house with kids. And then we try to be a family and forget about work.”