The Story
In Cuba, our family learned to whisper. De eso no se habla. We don’t talk about that. Don’t ask about the uncle who left. Don’t ask why that paper was signed. Don’t ask what happened to the neighbor’s son.
Exile doesn’t just take your house. It takes your recipes, your songs, your saints, your names for things. What we carried to Miami fit in suitcases — and in memory. A grandmother’s prayers. A father’s silence. A mother’s songs. That was the inheritance.
We rebuilt the way exiles rebuild: with work, with faith, and with a table that was always open. If you came to our house, you ate. If you stayed, you drank something sweet, you told a story, and you left a little less alone.
The first thing the world ever read of our writing was not a book. It was a wine label.
In Richard Blanco’s poetry class at FIU, Tony wrote poems in Spanish and English and printed them on bottles. Those bottles became Loco Por Ti and Crazy Love — wine as love letter, wine as poem you could hold.
People didn’t just drink it. They read it. They kept the bottles. They gave them to someone they loved. That taught us everything we still believe: a bottle is not just a bottle. It’s a story you share.
“A bottle is not just a bottle. It’s a story you share.”— Tony Haber-Matos, Casa Santiago
Blanco
Reposado
Mango
Coconut
Passion Fruit
Strawberry
Lychee
Spicy Tamarindo