Tropi Crystal spent close to a century locked out of using its own name. Tonight in Wynwood, the beer's founding families are getting a piece of that identity back, as Cervecería La Tropical hosts a Family Reunion celebration marking what the brewery calls the brand's historic return to its original packaging and trade dress.

The backstory has been documented across South Florida and Cuba's exile press for years. Cervecería La Tropical traces its roots to a Havana brewery founded in 1888 on land once owned by the Kohly family, whose gardens and ballrooms made the original site a cultural landmark in Cuba. By 1958, the brewery accounted for more than 60 percent of the country's beer production before the government seized its assets after the 1959 revolution, sending the Blanco-Herrera and Kohly families into exile. CEO Manny Portuondo, a descendant of the Kohly family, teamed up with Ramón Blanco-Herrera, a descendant of the brewery's founders, and spent more than two decades pursuing the legal rights to rebuild the brand before opening the 28,000-square-foot Wynwood brewery in 2021. When Portuondo tried to bring back the company's best-selling beer, Cristal, under its original name, he ran into a wall: a Peruvian brewery already held the U.S. trademark for "Cristal" spelled with a Latin I. Portuondo's team won federal approval in 2023 to sell the beer as Tropi Crystal, spelled with a Y, while keeping the original three-palm logo and color scheme intact.

Tropi Crystal's Wynwood Homecoming

Wednesday's event at the brewery's 42 NE 25th Street taproom builds on that same reclamation story, this time centered on the packaging itself. Cervecería La Tropical says the gathering will bring together founding family members, community leaders and media for interviews with Portuondo and Niek Vonk, the brewery's CEO, in both English and Spanish, with a ceremonial toast between the two scheduled for around 7 p.m. following a media check-in and interview window that opens at 6 p.m. The brewery describes the redesigned cans as a first look at Tropi Crystal's restored branding, though it has not detailed publicly what changed since the 2023 packaging beyond the visual refresh. Portuondo has been consistent about what the fight means to him personally. He has said the family lost the brewery "when the Cuban government took it at gunpoint," a line he has repeated in interviews dating back to Tropi Crystal's original 2023 debut.

Heineken's Role in Tropi Crystal's Next Chapter

Heineken has held majority control of Cervecería La Tropical since 2017, according to Global Drinks Intel, though Portuondo remains a minority stakeholder and the public face of the brand's origin story. Vonk spent two decades at Heineken, most recently running its global travel retail business, before relocating to Miami to take over as La Tropical's CEO. Since then, the brewery has pushed to expand its footprint beyond the taproom. In December, La Tropical became the first brand partner of the new Doral Amphitheater and signed a multi-year deal with Loud And Live, the Miami events company behind the Coconut Grove Arts Festival and Christmas Wonderland at Tropical Park, according to Brewer Magazine. The brewery is framing Wednesday's event as the next step in that expansion, tying the emotional weight of a family trademark fight to a broader push into South Florida's live event and sponsorship business.

What happens to Tropi Crystal from here says as much about Miami's Cuban exile community as it does about the beer business. The fight to reclaim the name sits alongside similar battles over Havana Club rum and other pre-revolution trademarks, a legal landscape that has shaped how Cuban American entrepreneurs operate in South Florida for decades. Wednesday's family reunion will not settle that broader fight. But for Portuondo and the descendants gathered in Wynwood tonight, getting the label right is its own kind of victory.