Exclusive Interview with Eduardo Bacardi, Director of Sales and Marketing for Ron del Barrilito Rum and Ron Haciendaand Santa Ana brands

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MK: Growing up in the Bacardi family, do you think you were destined to be in the rum industry?

EB: I am a sixth-generation member of the Bacardi family. That makes Facundo Bacardi my great, great, great grandfather. My father and his father were both involved in the family business. My father worked for over 30 years in sales at Bacardi. My grandfather was a Master Blender at Bacardi. As far as I can remember, I was around it. So, I knew it was part of my destiny that I would be working with rum. But I am very fortunate to be working with a different rum, Ron del Barrilito.

MK: Both Bacardi and Ron del Barrilito have long histories. Which is older?

EB: Bacardi was started in Cuba in 1862 and later moved to Puerto Rico. Ron del Barrilito started in 1880 at the Hacienda Santa Ana and has remained at the same site ever since. They have never moved, they never had to change locations, they have not changed the process. This is all that makes our story so interesting.

MK: When and where does the Barrilito story begin?

EB: The Fernandez family arrived in Puerto Rico in 1787.  The Spanish Crown bestowed upon them the Hacienda Santa Ana, which is in Bayomoun. Back then it was one of the largest sugar cane haciendas on the northern portion of the island. Over the next century, they would start to tinker with other things, and eventually, in 1880, the Ron Barrilito brand would come into existence. But it is interesting how they got there. It actually started in the late 1800s when Pedro Fernandez, a 3rd generation family member, went off to study chemical engineering in France at the École Centrale Paris, a very prestigious postgraduate-level institute that focused on engineering and science. In his immediate class, he studied with Andre Michelin, founder of Michelin Tire, and Alfred Cartier, son of the founder of Cartier and one of the original founders of the Egrot Pot Still. Gustave Eiffel, the designer of the Eiffel tower, graduated from the school a few years before Pedro. While he was there, Pedro became a fan of French brandies and cognacs. He began to study formulations and to learn the processes involved in their manufacture and aging. These were all pretty foreign to Puerto Rico at that time. He came back in 1871 and combined that knowledge with his family’s existing rum production and started tinkering around with different formulas on his own. In 1880, he formally introduced Ron del Barrilito.

MK: Where does the name come from? 

EB:  Ron del Barrilito, in Spanish, translates to the rum from the little barrel. The Fernandez family had been making rum for years. When Pedro came back from France and started making his specific blend, he would keep it in a very small barrel that he kept hidden. When guests came over, they were aware of this rum and would refuse the regular rum and ask for the special rum from the little barrel. Of course, he was forced to bring that rum out and had to start making more and more of it and refined the formula even more. That formula is what we use today, which I think is pretty impressive and something of which we are very proud.

MK: I was always confused by the name Barrilito. When you visit Hacienda Santa Ana and you go into the barrelhouse, there are these very large sherry barrels, so much bigger than the standard ex-bourbon barrels you normally see at a rum distillery. Certainly not little barrels. Now it makes sense.

EB: That’s true. We only use ex-sherry barrels from Jerez, Spain. They are 500-liter barrels that have been used to age Oloroso Sherry. It’s a lot easier in these times to do trans-continental shipping, but the Fernandez family was doing this back in 1880. They were bringing over these used barrels from Spain and God knows how long it took to get overseas and to little Puerto Rico. They have been doing this for the whole time. 

MK: At the end of the 19th century, Pedro Fernandez perfects his formula, starts producing it on a larger scale and starts selling it?

EB: Correct. So, Pedro starts the brand officially and incorporates it in 1880, and starts to sell the rum locally. At the time, the only product he is making is the 3 Stars, Ron Barrilito Tres Estrellas. The three stars on the label come from the tradition in the cognac world of rating their spirits with a number of stars, with three stars being the oldest. That is where the name comes from.

MK: What did the company do during Prohibition?

EB: Prohibition was a very dark time for a lot of producers. A lot of them shut down or found other things to do. The family was now led by Pedro Fernandez’s son, Edmundo Fernandez, who the company is named after. He is determined not to let the company fade away. So, they started making alcoholado, which is basically fragrant rubbing alcohol. When prohibition was finally lifted, they got right back into the rum business. As I mentioned the 3 Stars was the only product they had before Prohibition and it included rums 6 to 10-year old. That’s a long time to wait to get back into the business. So that’s when the 2 Stars product was born, a younger blend that includes rums 3 to 5 years old, which could get into the market sooner. It became very popular with the cocktail scene, which was the big boom at the time. The 2 Stars was created out of necessity and it has been with us ever since. However, the 3 Stars is our bread and butter, it is what our brand is known for, it is the original Barrilito.

MK: How would you describe the company in the early 21st century?

EB: After Edmundo, they continued with their family members taking over and running the business. It was a business, but this was really more of a hobby to them. This family did this out of pure passion to create this product, to keep their family legacy alive. That’s exactly how they treated the company. Going onto the last 30 years, they didn’t have the best business outlook on building a brand. A lot of people got very frustrated that there was not a very consistent supply coming out of Puerto Rico and even in Puerto Rico. The family didn’t say I am going to age enough stock so that I can constantly be producing X thousand cases per year. They didn’t think that far ahead.

MK: Then, several years ago, your father, who had recently retired from a long career at Bacardi, becomes interested in acquiring the company. How did that process start?

EB: My father had actually looked at the company when he was working for Bacardi. He felt these guys would be an amazing addition to the rum segment at Bacardi. But as you can expect, the Fernandez family are very proud people, the salt of the earth. To these guys, selling the company was never a thought. Over their dead body was usually the answer they gave to all these big companies when they came knocking. And it wasn’t just Bacardi. There was the Diageos of the world, the Pernods. Don Fernando’s son tells the story of the owner of a large American whiskey company falling in love with the brand in the 1970s. The owner came down to Puerto Rico and Fernando gave him a tour. He showed him around, brought him into his house, and at the end of it, the owner was blown away. He said, “I absolutely love this company, I love this family, I love the product that you make.” The owner turns around, writes a check, and slides it over to Fernando. He says “I want you to take this and I want you to put whatever number you want on it because I want to buy this company right now. You name your price and we will make it work.” Fernando takes a sip of his Barrilito 3 Stars and stares at him for a few seconds. He turns over to his left, opens a little lockbox that he kept on the shelf and pulls out a revolver, and puts it on the table. He says “I want you to get the hell out of my house. I am insulted that you would even do this. This company is not for sale. Get out of here before I get mad.” He then rips up the check. I think that is the perfect way to describe how this family felt. 

My father retired, he was still young, and retirement suited him well for about two weeks. Then he got bored. He was always passionate about the rum industry. He worked his whole life with Bacardi in many different areas. Now he wanted to do something new in the rum industry. He wanted to grab the reins of a new project himself. He had always been friends with the Fernandez family. He assessed the situation as it was and the reality was the two gentlemen, who were grandsons of the original founder Pedro, were at the time, 84 and 85 years old, and none of their children were involved in the business. I think we all know how that story goes if it plaid out another decade. It is unfortunate because it is a brand that was so coveted and that they did not have the necessary future in place to continue at all. My father addressed it with them. He told them that more important than us acquiring this brand is keeping this brand alive because there is a very grim reality that if they don’t make a change in the next few months or years, this brand may disappear. It became even more of a reality when the older gentlemen, the 86-year old, informed my dad that the Barrilito formula was in his head. It had never been written down. That’s the style in which they ran this company. 

MK: What finally convinced the family to accept your father’s offer?

EB: It was not a negotiation about price or how the transaction would go about. It was completely focused on how their heritage would be preserved. For us, it was a no-brainer. One of the biggest questions the Fernandez family had, was when we take over the brand, were we going to remove their name from the label. Were we going to change the name and put our name on there? They had never changed the label in 140 years. No, we didn’t want anything to do with changing their heritage. We are not trying to come in and claim fame to their 140 years of amazing history. We want to share it with the rest of the world. So, they finally came around and said yes, you are the people that we want to deal with. They put a lot of trust into us and we put a lot of trust into them in turn by taking over a formula that is in this gentlemen’s head for who knows how many years. That makes me proud to know that I am part of something that is going to be carried on in a way that is special to them and Puerto Ricans. There were a lot of synergies between our family and their family. Don Fernando says it makes him happy to see that my brother and I are working with our father. It reminds him of when he and his brother worked with their father. I am on the commercial side and my brother is involved on the production side and that is exactly how he and his brother did it. He sees us as a younger version of his family and that we want to promote Barrilito, while at the same time respecting all that has been put into place. They didn’t have the capability or the desire to really go out and share it like it should have been. We stepped in with the knowledge of growing a brand on the sales side, but also on the side of improving the facilities. Before the transaction was complete, we were already investing in the facility. We had some wooden racks that were literally falling apart. We are talking two termites away from losing hundreds of combined years of rum in some of these warehouses. We put a lot of money into making sure they were brought up to date, that our people are safe, that the aged stock is insured for the future. We are not in this to steal the fame and the mystique of the brand or family. We are just here to help people learn about this brand, grow it and make sure it doesn’t disappear. 

MK: In 2019 you opened a new $2M Visitor Center. Is that part of that education process?

EB: Yes. We wanted to do the right thing with this brand. That just doesn’t end with repairing the warehouses, doing some landscaping, and continuing on as we are.  It means let’s do everything. Let’s create an experience for a brand that deserves it. That’s where the Visitor’s Center Experiences came from. One of our aging warehouses took its final blow when Hurricane Maria damaged it in 2017. We repurposed it into what is the starting point of our three Visitor Center Tours. We have the Basic Heritage Tour, which is simply a walk around of the property, getting the history, seeing the facilities. There is the Tasting Tour, which includes the full Heritage Tour and then you sit down with a brand specialist and they walk you through the 2 Stars, the 3 Stars, the 4 Stars, and the 5 Stars in a sensorial experience. The Mixology Tour, also starts with the Heritage Tour, but then you get to create three classic cocktails with a Barrilito twist.

MK: I visited Barrilito in the early 90’s and at that time you were really not set up for tours, but Fernando Fernandez was kind enough to take me through the entire facility.

EB: Back then Barrilito wasn’t fit for tours, they didn’t have a system where they would bring people around with safety protocols. They just did it because that’s the way they were. Don Fernando was basically giving you a tour of his house. He loved welcoming people. He still lives in the Hacienda today, even though he is no longer officially part of the company. He wakes up every morning at 5:30 AM, he puts on his Barrilito polo, he has a key ring on his hip and he walks around the property and says hello to everyone. We are concerned about him and we tell him “don’t forget to put on your mask.” He says “you don’t understand, I have the cure to every disease, every illness, every virus that you could possibly get. I drink a shot of Barrilito when I wake up, I drink a shot in the afternoon, and one right before bed and I have not gotten sick in the last 55 years.”

MK: As part of the acquisition team, your father brought in another former Bacardi employee, Master Blender Luis Planas.

EB: As my father says, there is no way that we would be involved with Barrilito without Luis Planas. Luis was Master Blender for Bacardi for over 35 years. He has an amazing history and is an incredible source of knowledge. 

MK: What did Luis find when he first went into the aging facility?

EB: Luis came in and walked through the aging facility with the then-master blender, Manuel Fernandez. Luis came from a company that had millions of barrels and he is walking into an aging warehouse that has a few thousand. He is looking around and sees barrels dating back to the early 2000s. Then he sees barrels from the 1990s, from the 1980s, and even some barrels from the 1970s. He stops Manuel Fernandez and says “I just have to ask you, why are there so many barrels in here that are 20, 30, 40 years old. You guys have two products, the 2 Stars which is 2 to 5 years old, and the 3 Stars which is 6-10 years old.” Manuel just shrugged and said “I don’t really know. We just have them there. They didn’t make it into a batch of 2 Stars, they missed the batches of 3 Stars and now they are just aging.” This was another situation in which we had to act and act quickly. We had to do something with this. Luis felt that half of the barrels were probably only 30% full at that point and some of them might even be empty. If we didn’t do something with these rums now, we would lose them forever. This was the birth of the 4 Stars and 5 Stars which came out in the last two years. 

MK: You mentioned that Barrilito uses the same formula today that Pedro Fernandez developed in 1880. What is so unique about that formula?

EB:  First and foremost, we make the products in the same family manner, on the same Hacienda Santa Ana that it has been made since 1880. It has not been relocated, it has not changed.  We don’t have a distillery anymore, that distillery shut down a little bit after Prohibition, so we source our neutral cane distillate and that is where our process starts. We have 28 maceration tanks. These are wooden tanks and in each tank, we put the neutral cane distillate and we add a particular ingredient. This ingredient is natural and dates back to 1880 and we respect that same formula today. I do not know all 28 ingredients in the secret formula, but let’s say for example, that one might be apricots, another might be bananas, another would be plums. In each of these tanks, that one particular fruit or spice is added in large quantities and mixed in with the rum. We leave that macerating for several months, let’s say 3 to 6 months, and in that time the fruits give off their flavor. They break down in the alcohol and are preserved and that alcohol takes on a very particular flavor. Then we will take more of the neutral distillate and, per the family formula, we will add specific amounts of each macerate. I’m making this up to give you a perspective, but let’s say the formula calls for 3000 gallons of neutral distillate, to which you need to add 2 gallons of plum macerate, you need half a gallon of banana macerate, you need three gallons of orange macerate, and so on. You would add a specific amount of each macerate to the total. That will marry for a few weeks and eventually you have the Rum Barrilito base.

MK: There are those that would call this a spiced rum.

EB: I get that question a lot. The answer, for several reasons, is no, it is not a spiced rum. First, it is not a spiced rum because when we add all these macerates, combined they make up less than 0.9 percent of the total base. To be a spiced rum, according to TTB standards, you have to have more than 2% coming from external flavors. And second, we are not a spiced rum because we don’t classify ourselves as that. We have never been a spiced rum; Barrilito has been doing this before spice rum even existed. By TTB standards we are not a spiced rum, we don’t classify ourselves as a spiced rum and our end-product does not carry on one particular flavor. If you think about it, we are using 28 different macerates, where all the combined items make up less than 1 percent of the total before it goes into aging.

MK: And that is enough to give Barrilito its unique flavor profile?

EB: Yes. Combine that with the sherry barrels and the ultimate blending, you have the final product. That formula carries a strong effect on the rum. If we were to leave out the formula and just age the neutral spirit, we would have an average Spanish-style rum. A good rum, but nothing unique. Again, these are processes that a lot of cognacs and brandies used a long time ago. Once we have that base created, it then goes into the barrels.

MK: What proof does the rum go into the barrels?

EB: Our rum goes into the barrels at 90 proof. We proof down, using natural rainwater that we collect on the Hacienda. We proof down before the process of aging. A lot of bigger companies would look at the efficiency only and say proofing down before aging isn’t practical because the yield is a lot less. The Fernandez family believed that everything they aged, should age together. They believe you shouldn’t add any foreign element once that product comes out of the barrel, it should only be blended with other rums and that is your final product. So, our rums go in around 90 proof. They come out a little bit less than that, due to some evaporation, and then they are almost always at 86 proof which is what we bottle at.

MK: Is the base for the 2 Stars different from the base for the 3 Stars or the 5 Stars?

EB:  The base is the same for all of our core products. The only difference is how long they age and how they are blended. Once these barrels are filled, they sit. Let’s say the Master Blender wants to make a batch of 3 Stars, which is a blend of rums from 6 to 10 years old. There is a formula when it comes to the maceration process, but there is no formula when it comes to making a batch of the 3 Stars. It is not as simple as reading a piece of paper that says take 2 barrels of rum aged 6 years, 8 barrels of rum aged 7 years, and 10 barrels aged 10 years. He has to go barrel by barrel because these barrels all have different flavors. It’s not like a barrel turns 10 years old, you sing it happy birthday, and you take it off the rack and it is ready to go. You might taste it and decide this barrel is 10 years old but it’s not ready, it doesn’t have the profile that you need. When we go to make a 3 Stars blend, we know that we will use nothing younger than 6 years, but very often we go over the 10 years because there is a barrel that the Master Blender feels is necessary for that blend and he will throw it in there. In the previous few batches of 3 Stars that we made, he has used barrels that are between 15 and 17 years old, not only for flavor but also for color correction. Again, we don’t use caramel, we don’t use artificial coloring. So, if he does need to make the color darker to match previous profiles, he’ll go and find a darker barrel, even if that barrel is 17 years old.

MK: That brings us to your two newer offerings. We talked about 2 Stars being a blend of rums between 3 to 5 years and 3 Stars being 6 to 10 years. Can you tell us about the 4 Stars and the 5 Stars?

EB: The 4 Stars is a blend of rums between 18 and 20 years old. It was launched with the opening of the Visitor Center and is only available there. When you purchase a bottle of the 4 Stars you get to fill your own bottle. The blend is in a pseudo barrel, a stainless-steel tank inside a barrel. You recreate the experience of filling your bottle from a barrel. It’s a really cool, interactive process. You even get to wax the bottle. Then there are the 5 Stars. We wanted to take advantage of the extra-aged inventory we have before it all disappeared. Luis went to work and he created a 5 Stars blend which has rums aged up to 35 to 38 years. But it is a blend that has rums as young as 15 years. If you look at our bottle, we don’t go for the age statement; we don’t go for the big number on the bottle. That’s not our style. We don’t want people to know us for Barrilito 35. 

MK: In addition to the four Barrilito offerings, you now have an overproof rum, Ron Hacienda Santa Ana. The name Barrilito does not appear on the label. Why is that?

EB:  It is not technically a Barrilito product, but it is a cousin to the Barrilito products. Barrilito has its style and it has its aging process. But we wanted to get into the overproof segment and we wanted to pay homage to the Hacienda Santa Ana. It is a 2-year old aged rum at 138 proof, or 69% ABV. Years ago, our Master Blender, Luis Planas, was involved in the project of creating Bacardi 151. When he first made it, it was an aged, overproof rum, not 151, but slightly lower. But working for a larger company, many times his hands were forced to deliver a product that would meet requirements for production, volumes, cost, and strength, so his creative side was somewhat silenced. Here at Edmundo B. Fernandez, Inc., he was able to put this masterful blending to work and create this overproof product as an incredible rum that balanced many elements for its age and strength. With the Santa Ana product, he combines rums aging for 2 years with a palatable 69% ABV, and it results in a product that has much more use than the traditional 151 overproof. 

MK: Does it start with the same combination of macerates?

EB: It includes some of the elements of the macerate, but not all. It does not age in ex-sherry barrels, which is another reason why we didn’t want to put the Barrilito name on it.

MK: Can we expect other `cousins’ under the Ron Hacienda label?

EB: That’s why we started the label, to sort of open our doors. It would definitely be our area of experimenting with slightly different products. I can tell you now with complete transparency that, for the moment, we don’t have anything in the works. We committed to the Fernandez family that we don’t want to be out there changing their product. Every Barrilito you see out there, it’s theirs. The 2 Stars, the 3 Stars, the 4 Stars, the 5 Stars. You will never see a 1 Star. It is what it is. We created and finished the portfolio that they always wanted to make. And everything we do outside of that, we will do under the brands like Ron Hacienda Santa Ana. But for the time being, we are really focused on the Barrilito portfolio.

MK: You recently announced a $12M expansion plan to increase production by 400%. What will that entail?

EB: As we move into the brand, our focus is on making the product more available to those who want to enjoy these premium rums. As part of this expansion, we have taken measures, especially in terms of investment, to make sure that the artisanal process of maceration, aging, and blending is preserved with whatever growth the company goes through. As part of the plan, we are installing three new 25,000-gallon tanks to store prime raw materials. We have also ordered more than 28,000 ex-Oloroso Sherry white oak barrels from Spain, as well as other industrial equipment, such as forklifts, industrial racks, pumping stations, alternate power generation systems, and laboratory equipment.

MK: Eduardo, thank you. I appreciate you taking the time to tell us about the history of Ron del Barrilito and its unique production methods.

EB: Thank you for reaching out and for your interest in the Ron del Barrilito and Ron Hacienda Santa Ana brands. Our brand prides itself on being very transparent when it comes to our history, process and products.  I love having these conversations to talk about the brand.