Bruce Lee in the Dominican Republic April 19, 2020

Last night I had my first beer in over a month and a half (a Presidente Light) while watching the Bruce Lee/Kung Fu action sequence highlight movie Bruce Lee and Kung Fu Mania. While doing so, I recalled seeing a picture online of Bruce Lee drinking a Presidente Beer while in the Dominican. Something about it left a gnawing feeling in my gut. Here is that picture.

But before I go into the story behind the picture, I wanted to do a quick recap on the history of Presidente Beer.

Presidente Beer is the National Beer of the Dominican Republic produced by La Cervecería Nacional Dominicana (CND.) The brewery was established in 1929 and the beer called Presidente debuted in 1935 in honor of Dominican President Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina aka Trujillo. This first beer was a dark beer proved to not be very popular. By the 1960's the beer was changed from a dark beer to the Pilsener style beer that is enjoyed today. Another popular drink produced at La Ceverceria Nacional Dominicana was la Malta Morena. I'll touch on that beverage in a little bit. 

In 2012 Anheuser Busch InBev’s Brazilian unit AmBev agreed to buy a controlling stake in the Dominican Republic-based brewer Cerveceria Nacional Dominicana (CND) for over $1.2 billion. That purchase came out to be roughly 42 percent stake from majority shareholder E. Leon Jimenes. Earlier this year it was announced that former Major Leaguer Alex Rodriguez would become chairman of Presidente USA and taking a minority stake in the brand. Let's go back to Bruce Lee.

Bruce Lee visited the Dominican Republic in 1970 amid the popular rise of martial arts on the island. The head of the Tae Kwon Do school was José Ramón Reyes better known as Cuqui. On this occasion, a series of exams would be administered to the martial arts students and famous karate expert Jhoon Rhee would be visiting the school from Washington, D.C. To everyone's surprise, Rhee would not come alone. He was accompanied on the trip by none other than Bruce Lee.

One of the students taking his exams that day was Ellis Perez, a popular television personality and journalist. Upon meeting Bruce Lee, Perez had Lee do the media circuit which included a press conference at the Roof Garden de la Cervecería Nacional Dominicana. Perez goes into detail on his meeting with Lee in the post Mis Encuentros con Bruce Lee from the Imagines de Nuestra Historia blogpage. Now here is where the picture comes in. For as long as I've seen that photo, people have said that Bruce Lee is in DR and he's drinking a Presidente Beer.

Now I don't know alot about Bruce Lee, but I've read that Bruce Lee was a teetotaler. For those of you who are not familiar with the term "teetotaler," that's a person who does not drink alcohol. I remember that there was a major issue with an ad campaign that Johnnie Walker had for its Johnnie Walker Blue blend, with a digitized version of Bruce Lee in the ads. For more on that I recommend you read the article Bruce Lee whisky advert branded a disgrace by Jeremy Blum from the South China Morning Post dated July 10, 2013.

Looking at the image above, the drink in Lee's glass does not look like a Presidente. It is way too dark of a beverage. So I continued to go down the internet rabbit hole and came across the following two images which confirm my suspicion:

Lee is holding (and was photographed in front of) a bottle of the aforementioned Malta Morena. Why is this Malta Morena important to this post on Bruce Lee? Well, if Lee is a teetotaler, it would make sense that he would be drinking a Malta Morena rather than a Presidente. For those of you who don't know what type of beverage a Malta Morena is, the product listing for Malta Morena on the Productos Latinos website describes it as such (translated from Spanish): 

Malta Morena is a delicious, nutritious, refreshing drink. A drink made from 100% natural ingredients such as malted barley, hops, aqua, calcium, magnesium and B vitamins. Malted barley is a cereal that maintains the same characteristics as wheat, corn and oats.

With that product being made by the brewery that makes Presidente, it makes sense that Lee would be drinking the non-alcoholic beverage hosted by Presidente. But further down the rabbit hole I went. Apparently I wasn't the only one who was iffy about what Lee was drinking in those photos. It would take two tweets by Ellis Perez, who is in the first picture with Bruce Lee at the top of the post, to settle the issue once and for all. Here are his tweets from July 12, 2015:

Deboaclarar q Bruce Lee no ingería alcohol-en as fotos conmigo sevenlas botellas d Presidente peroel tomaba Malta Morena-fíjese color oscuro

— Ellis Perez (@EllisPerezSr) July 12, 2015

@EllisPerezSr Bruce Lee no ingería alcohol d ningun tipo-pudimos comprobarlo.

— Ellis Perez (@EllisPerezSr) July 13, 2015

And there you go.

Here are a couple of videos by the aforementioned Cuqui Reyes talking about the time that Bruce Lee visited the Dominican Republic.

I'm glad that I am able to close the book for myself on this while having the quarantine time to do so. 😝😝😝Anywhoo, let's see what other obscure tidbits I can come up with for the next post.

Until Then May You Have Some Happy, Safe and Responsible Drinking,
SiscoVanilla

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