Rum Historian by Marco Pierini
After a few months’ break, here I am again, taking up again the story of Cuban rum from where we left off. We had reached the beginning of the 1930s with the end of Prohibition in the U.S. (See REPEAL in the June 2025 issue), but now I will resume the narrative from a few decades earlier. This series of articles tends to focus on Bacardi, in part because of the objective importance that Bacardi had and still has in the world of rum, but also because, whereas there are many sources about Bacardi, on the contrary it is difficult to find reliable material on the other brands. This does not mean that they did not exist. The Cuba of the period was all a flourishing of small and medium-sized rum companies. But of them little more than the name remains. Moreover, Cuba is living a very difficult situation and, unfortunately, I have not been able to find adequate sources. Still, I couldn’t help but write something about the other iconic Cuban rum, Arechabala, that is, the family and the company that invented the most famous brand of Cuban rum, Havana Club, which still today is the protagonist of hard political, legal and commercial battles on a global scale.
Fortunately, I have recently found some useful sources about Arechabala.
Anyway, I have already touched on the topic of Arechabala’s origin (See “OVERCOMING THE RUM INFERIORITY COMPLEX (ALMOST)” in the May 2024 issue), but it deserves to be told more in depth. I would like to start with part of a short and tasty article published in 2018 by the Spanish, actually, Basque journalist Ana Vega Pérez de Arlucea; the translation is mine, with a little help from my family. For the original, here is the link:
https://www.euskalkultura.eus/euskara/besteek-esana/jose-arechabala-el-vizcaino-que-transformo-el-ron-de-cuba-el-correo-n?p=85
“On September 21, 1862, a 15-year-old man from Vizcaya landed in Havana with the desire to eat the world. It was a different time, and 15-year-olds were much cleverer than now because of hunger and need, so you mustn’t get too shocked. José Arechabala Aldama, this was the boy’s name, had left his native Gordejuela behind to get on by his own in Cuba, surely dreaming of earning a good living and, if at all, earn enough bucks to go back some day and raise an indiano mansion [Indianos, that is, Indians – so the enriched returned immigrants were called] to leave his villagers flabbergasted. He crossed the Atlantic with ambition, but not even in his wildest dreams could he have thought that 150 years later his name would be associated with one of Cuba’s best-known and sold products: Havana Club Rum. You probably know that another great brand of rum, Bacardí, owes its name to a Barcelonese, and yet the story of Havana Club and its Basque founder, much more intimately connected to us, goes unnoticed.
Never again! From today we can drink the cubalibre properly, knowing that behind this brand was the work of a Biscayan clan. And truly it was a clan, since in the nineteenth century it was common to emigrate with the support (and perhaps the promise of a job) of some relatives or acquaintances. This was the case of José Arechabala, who began his Cuban adventure in the shadow of another Gordejuelan businessman. Domingo Aldama, a distant relative of the young José, had enriched himself thanks to the slave trade and the sugar plantations.
Between 1815 and 1870 he attracted to the Caribbean island a multitude of countrymen from the Basque Country, dazzled by his power. Our protagonist began working in Matanzas in the sugar trade and then, in 1869, he passed to a maritime agency in which another Basque robber baron had participation, Julián de Zulueta. Marqués de Álava, mayor of La Habana and multibillionaire, in 1873 Zulueta appointed José Arechabala as representative in his estates in the neighboring and flourishing city of Cárdenas, “the Cuban Chicago”. Actually, José settled there, married a Cuban woman named Carmen Hurtado de Mendoza and saved up to set up his own business in 1878, a small distillery called La Vizcaya. With the Biscayan coat of arms as a trademark, with its oak and its two wolves, Arechabala began to make liqueurs, cane brandy and rum with the by-product that came from a sugar factory also owned by him. His hard work and his fine nose for trade led him to quickly succeed and become one of the largest manufacturers and exporters on the island, knowing how to survive cyclones, revolutions, wars and a thousand other misfortunes.
At the beginning of the 20th century, José Arechabala already had everything: money, family and an Indian house in Gordexola (which currently houses the Town Hall). Honorary President of the Spanish colony in Cuba and a prominent member of the Basque Center of Havana, he devoted his fortune to beautify Cárdenas with a theater (the Arechabala, demolished in 1963) and to stroll through Varadero, beret cocked.”
In Cárdenas, Basque immigrants built a real industrial district based on their common origin, as had been the case of Catalan immigrants in Santiago, some decades earlier.
And here a brief reflection is in order. Bacardí and Arechabala were Spanish immigrants and, like them, many other successful entrepreneurs in Cuba. The birth of these and other successful companies is not so easy to understand, in view of wars, insurrections, violence and widespread corruption. One of the reasons for their success was certainly the strong bond among Spanish immigrants. Link that materialized in the foundation of a Casino, an association that brought together immigrants from the same region and the whole of Spain for the preservation of regional and national identity, language, culture and cuisine etc. They were cultural associations and social meeting places for leisure activities with dances, parties, etc. at the same time; decisive relation networks for businessmen and also mutual assistance societies, offering jobs, housing and medical assistance. Last, but not least, they promoted the immigrants’ participation in local civic life with donation, civic works, lobbying and so on, in some ways making up for the weakness of Cuban public institutions. Some casinos became rich and powerful, especially in Havana, with prestigious locations.
As far as I know, in the first ad of La Vizcaya published in 1900, the firm promoted itself as a destilería, but later in the same year the magazine Cuba Ilustrada called it alambique. According to the Real Academia de la Lengua, the Spanish word alambique means:
Utensilio que sirve para destilar una sustancia volátil, compuestofundamentalmente de un recipiente para calentar el líquido y de un conducto por el que sale la sustancia destilada (more or less: Apparatus for distilling a volatile substance, consisting mainly of a vessel for heating the liquid and a conduit through which the distilled substance exits). It sounds like a traditional Pot Still, but sadly the word is often used for distilling apparatuses in general and also for spirit factories.
One of the characteristics of the young Cuban republic is its constant reflection on itself. In addition to a strong cultural and political debate, this reflection has produced some splendid books (See “EL LIBRO DE CUBA 1925 (THE BOOK OF CUBA” in the June 2024 issue). In 1917, the same reasons led to the publication of “El Libro Azul de Cuba/ The Blue Book of Cuba”. It is a remarkably good work, a bilingual book in Spanish and English, illustrated with many period photos, introducing the social, economic and technological advantages of the island and its major protagonists. Large space is devoted to companies and entrepreneurs, halfway, I think, between information and promotion. It is a beautiful object too, with the unique flavor that only vintage documents have, but on the Net it costs $1250 ... I must therefore be satisfied with the English version of the article dedicated to José Arechabala Aldana. Here are some excerpts. The entire book online can be found at this link: Simurg | Vista | Libro azul de Cuba = The blue book of Cuba.
“The business was started in 1878, with one small building and poor machinery, but steadily, day by day, it manufactured its small quantity of rum and alcohol. As time passed a lighter was added to the equipment and more space provided for the storage of the molasses to be used in the Still. In 1885 a modern Distillery was installed and business began on a much larger scale. The business continued to prosper and in 1903, Mr. Arechabala was able to add an up-to-date Sugar Refinery to his establishment, and at the same time start a schooner line from Cardenas to Havana in order to facilitate his increasing exportation.”
Later on, The Blue Book of Cuba describes the situation of the distillery in the present, its present of course, that is 1917.
“The present establishment, known as ‘La Vizcaya’ covers the following departments: an up-to-date distillery for the manufacture of spirituous liquors and alcohol, a modern sugar refinery, extensive warehouses for sugar storage and molasses tanks, and an excellent schooner and launch service.
The distillery contains five large modern stills, two for distilling and three for rectifying the spirits. It produces on average three thousand hogsheads a month, of which the greater part is exported, (mainly to Europe), England and France alone taking immense shipments.The sugar refinery produces two hundred and fifty barrels of white sugar a day, the majority of which is consumed locally and in Havana. The warehouses for sugar storage are numerous and extensive and one immense warehouse is used only for the giant molasses tanks that hold the molasses to be used in the Distillery.”
Don José always remained very close to his native land and returned, as soon as his economic success in Cuba made it possible to do so, with his head high, in a large and prestigious house.
“Mr Arechabala has many commercial and financial interests … His palatial residence, ‘Villa Carmen’, on the Paseo de las Quintas, is one of the largest and most beautiful in Cardenas. He also owns a splendid residence in Gordejuela, Vizcaya, his native home in Spain. There, he and his wife spend their summers, in company with their daughter Mercedes, whose home is in that city. Besides these two magnificent homes, they are the owners of a charming chalet in breezy, picturesque Varadero.” He would die in 1923 without seeing his best-known legacy, Havana Club.
The speed of its growth is impressive: founded in 1878, in 1911 it was already able to finance the Teatro de Cárdenas. Then there were many public works, the transformation in 1921 of the company into a joint-stock company: JASA, José Arechabala Sociedad Anonima. There followed further growth and diversification of production: sugar, rum, alcohol for medical use and as household fuel, and many other products. Its catalogue included different rums such as Arecha, Caña 1920, Habanita, Doubloon, Bucanero and Tres Arbolitos. In addition, it imported some foreign spirits and other things. All this growth happened despite two devastating hurricanes, 1888 and 1933.
POST SCRIPTUM
A little Rum History nerds digression. My a THE QUEST FOR QUALITY, April 2023, prompted some interesting observations by Richard Nicholson, Matt Pietrek and Andrew Nicholls in the FB group RUM HISTORY, on the relation between Pot and Column Stills in Cuban rum. We knew that in 1832 some continuous stills were already operating in Cuba (See INGENIOS AND THE CONTINUOUS STILL, March 2023), and Cardenas was a modern town, but we had no incontrovertible evidence. Now there is good news: I have just received a great book written by a descendent of the Arechabala family and by a renowned historian: María Victoria Arechabala Fernández and Antonío Santamaría García “Arechabala Azúcar y Ron” 2023. It is full of family stories, period photos, documents and seminal information based on a rich and rare bibliography. I have only just begun to explore it, we’ll see. And while we’re at it, Richard, I have read you’ll be publishing your book! Please keep me posted.
Marco Pierini
