Rum Historian by Marco Pierini
HISTORY OF CUBAN RUM
12. BACARDI
Bacardi is perhaps the most famous rum brand in the world. The Company was founded in 1862 in Santiago (Cuba) and for many years presented its rum and itself as a product authentically, typically, Cuban. Then things changed and today Bacardi is a large multinational company with no concrete ties to Cuba. But we will come back to this in the future. In this article I just want to tell about the birth and the first steps of Bacardi and of a new type of rum, the Ron ligero cubano, that is, the Cuban light rum, trying to understand the reasons for its great and lasting success.
It’s not an easy task. Over time, the Company itself has produced its own literature, and its own mythology, to which have been added numerous works written about it by many authors. Besides, Bacardi has always aroused strong mixed passions, not so much for its rum as for its political role.
Moreover, I could only do little first hand research. That is, I read only a few primary sources such as archives, documents and books of the time, while I relied mainly on works written by other authors, that is, on secondary literature. So, I tried to tell the facts using widely spread information, placing them in their historical context to understand them better. And as you will see, many questions remain without a satisfactory answer.
Let’s start with the French. Yes, because one of the most important, and today almost forgotten facts in the history of Cuba in the 1800s, is the strong French influence. After 1791, with the slave revolution in the French sugar colony of Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti) “An estimated 30,000 exiles from St. Domingue settled in Cuba and played a major role in the development of commercial agriculture, as Cuba moved to fill the vacuum in sugar and coffee production resulting from the revolution in St. Domingue.” (Luis Martínez-Fernández in Alexander von Humboltd’s The Island of Cuba: a Political Essay, 2001).
Significant immigration from France continued even in the first decades of the 19th century: “French sugar technicians were soon to be found in all the bigger Cuban sugar mills and indeed the biggest mills of all were built by them. … in the twelve months 1 December 1818 to 30 November 1819, 1,332 immigrants came to Cuba, of whom 416 were Spaniards, 389 Frenchmen, 65 Englishmen, 126 Anglo-Americans” Also the famous “Jamaican train” in spite of its name, “was a French Saint Domingue innovation” (Hugh Thomas Cuba. A History, 1970).
The American writer Samuel Hazard traveled to Havana in the middle of 1860s and he later wrote a book (Cuba with pen and pencil, 1870) illustrating it with numerous drawings. It’s a fascinating work, a kind of tourist guide, written by an intelligent, cultured man, describing the life of colonial Cuba, just before the beginning of the first War of Independence. Here are some quotes “Many of the people speak English, a great many French - which, in fact, is the household language in some parts of the island … One of the owners of a line of these carriages had made over $100,000, and was desirous of selling out and going back to his belle France, from whence he originally came … Of the small trades, there seem to be an innumerable quantity of tailors, milliners or mantua makers, hatters, perfumers, artificial flowers makers, and furnishing stores; many of this class of people are French women, and I am told they have the business of the modistes entirely in their own hands.”
Facundo Bacardí Massó was a young Catalan immigrant that arrived in Santiago in 1828, where some brothers of his already lived. Catalan immigrants dominated much of the trade in Santiago and throughout Cuba and were known for their hard work and professionalism. And Don Facundo also started as a trader. Only many years later did he decide to dedicate himself to rum making. Those were the years when the production and export of Cuban rum were growing, and many were trying to improve the quality of the product. (See THE QUEST FOR QUALITY in the April 2023 issue)
“Between 1851 and 1856, at least half a dozen handbooks on rum making were published in Cuba, summarizing all the available technical information. It was only a matter of time before someone came up with a high-quality product. At least Facundo was in the right place. Though sugar production was not as advanced in the east of Cuba as in the west, Santiago was Cuba’s closest connection to the British and French islands where the best-known rums were made. The French colonists who had come to the Santiago area from Haiti brought with them an appreciation for fine liquors.” (Tom Gjelten Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba, 2008)
An important French connection can be found at the very beginning of his enterprise. The family of Amalia – Don Facundo Bacardí’s wife – came from France and his first partner and master in the art of rum making was a French immigrant, José León Bouteiller, “who had a pot still that he used for making cognac and candies. Bouteiller rent a house on Marina Baja Street from Clara Astié, Facundo’s sometime benefactor and the godmather of his wife Amalia. … as part of his rental agreement he agreed to share his pot still with Facundo and assist him in rum distillation trials.” (Gjelten)
After months of experimentations, the two partners had improved their rum to the point they were ready to begin a commercial production, “In May 1862, the firm was incorporated under the name ‘Bacardi, Bouteiller, & Compañía. To maximize revenue, the company made and sold various sweets … along with Boueiller’s cognac and wine made from oranges. But it was the new style of rum that attracted the most attention” (Gjelten). “It was a light product, almost transparent … and free of the foul odors that in preceding versions had produced so many headaches. The lines of people waiting to purchase this rum were longer every morning, especially after the early months when Don Facundo so cleverly gave away free samples. In the beginning, distribution was limited to the immediate Santiago area, because there were no bottles for the rum – meaning customers had to bring their own containers” (Gjelten, quoting Miguel Bonera Miranda Oro blanco: una historia empresarial del ron cubano, 2.000)
“The distillery was just a short distance from the waterfront and the business quickly became well known as a quality operation among the ship captains who put into Santiago port. The sailors would buy their rum by the barrel, and on the next stop in Santiago they would return for a refill. Slowly, the reputation of ‘Bacardi’ rum spread across Cuba, and by 1868 it was being sold in Havana.” (Gjelten)
Did they invent a secret formula? This is an important part of Bacardi’s own narrative, but I am not so sure. We already know that choice of the raw material, attention to the production process and cleaning of the equipment were scarce in Cuban rum making. The new Company was different. “The new rum that was soon to appear on the market was not the result of any spectacular breakthrough. Rather it was the end-product of patient trial and error, better filtering here, more ageing there, total attention to the details; temperature, ventilation, light and shade, the degree of cane’s ripeness and the quality of the molasses, the right choice of the wood for the making of the ageing vats and, above all, the ability to balance all these factors; or rather, more than ability, the art of using them correctly. And so, the new and different rum was born, a refined (in both senses of the word) product, a quality product: Cuban rum.” (Hugh Barty-King and Anton Massel Rum yesterday and today, 1983).
“And then there was perhaps the most innovative element of all: Facundo Bacardi was a brilliant marketer. Coming to the rum business from a background in retail sales rather than sugar production, he knew the importance of promotion and publicity. He carefully monitored the rum production, and as evidence of his approval of each batch he personally signed the label on every bottle that came off the production line. His bold signature ‘Bacardi M.’ … became instantly recognizable. He had taken a cue from the customers who asked for ‘Bacardi’s rum’ even before it was bottled under that name” (Gjelten)
Anyway, in 1874, Bouteiller retired and the firm was reorganized changing its name into “Bacardí & Compañía”, the Brand under which it would gain great and lasting fame.
To put things into their context, and to relativize a little, it’s important to remember that in those same years many new brands of Cuban rum were born and were greatly successful. “New styles appeared: dry, straw-colored Carta Blanca; Carta Oro, golden in hue; Ron Palmas, amber, sweet and aromatic; rich, dark Añejo. As these styles developed, so did the world’s first real rum brands. Between 1860 and 1890, numerous brands emerged. Camps Hermanos introduced Ron Matusalem; Fandiño Pérez launched Ron Superior; Crossi Mestre y Cia distilled Ron Crossi y Mestre; Bacardï y Boutellier SC produced Ron Carta Blanca; JM Parejo introduced Ron Carta Parejo; Trueba Hermanos launched Ron de las Tres Negritas; Rovira y Guillaume distilled Ron Añejo Vencedor.” (A. Miller and J. Brown with D. Broom and N. Strangeway Cuba. The Legend of Rum, 2017)
Now let’s skip a century and read two authoritative Cuban sources. Leonardo Padura is one of the most famous Cuban writers. He began as a journalist and in 1988 he wrote a long article for the Cuban magazine Juventud Rebelde: La larga vida secreta de una fórmula secreta (The long secret life of a secret formula), then republished in the book El viaje más largo, 2014. In the article he interviewed two great names of Cuban rum making, here are some quotes:
Arturo García, production manager of the Caney rum factory in Santiago de Cuba (the old Bacardi factory): “Don Facundo ... was investing every penny he obtained in the creation of those reserves that would one day turn his cheap rums into quality liqueurs. ... a unique operation in the history of rum, an operation that, moreover, would later prove unrepeatable: the unaffordable creation of a stock of rums aged five, ten, fifteen years, that so many losses provoked to him, but that were building the basis of a real empire.”
José Navarro, the first Cuban maestro ronero: “The mystery? Repeats, without ceasing to smile. There is no mystery here, but a secret: the secret of working well. That was the great secret of Bacardi ... Then comes the ageing of the aguardiente. ... This is a historic practice that Bacardi established and that we have managed to preserve. Then follows a careful filtration, what we call the destupe del aguardiente to remove the usual rum stink.”
“And now it is possible to make rum. But our rum is produced with high quality alcohol and spirits, purified and filtered. From its mixture comes basic rum, which is subjected to a period of ageing ranging from six months to nine years, according to what kind of rum we want to make. If it is Carta Blanca old rums are not used, if it is Gold ‘half aged rums’ are used and for the Añejo we use the ‘veterans’. And therein lies the secret: maintain discipline in this cycle, which can last up to nine years, to work now for what will be made in the sometimes distant future.
But in modern industry all this depends on aged rums stored for years. No modern factory can begin to age rums to be put on the market only after nine years. That is unaffordable, quite simply … As you see, there is no such mystery, only discipline, tradition, professional zeal and reserves to make a good rum come true.”
-writte by Marco Pierini-
POST SCRIPTUM
And yet … Did Bacardi rum have a distinctive taste from the very beginning, different from the usual rums? Obviously, we will never know, but from its immediate success it would seem so. And this new taste, did it only derive from the greater care of the entire production process? Or was it from something new? Not from some radical innovation of distillation though, because for years they used a traditional pot still. Not even from aging because, being at the beginning, they could not have stocks of aged rum.
So? Maybe from the fermentation? The scientific knowledge regarding fermentation was rudimentary and in Cuba they normally used long fermentation, even 7 days. While ron ligero comes from short fermentation. This fundamental step could not have happened by chance and perhaps it was not even a slow and gradual change. At some point someone must have decided - consciously and deliberately - to experience short fermentation. But who? And when? I would love to know.
