Rum Historian by Marco Pierini
We have reached the third and last article dedicated to Basil Woon’s “When it’s cocktail time in Cuba”, published in 1928. In the first two, published in January and February, we dwelled on the dolce vita of the American tourists in Cuba, on the most famous cocktails and the trendiest bars, with some hints at other pleasures.
In this article, on the contrary, we’ll speak only about rum. Unfortunately, the only Cuban rum Woon deals with is Bacardi; the others, which were many and some even prestigious, just don’t appear. However, Woon speaks a lot about rum in general, and by sharing a series of memories and peppering the text with personal opinions, he also provides us with some interesting information about rum consumption in the first decades of the 1900s. In fact, I would say, more modernly that this part of the book helps us understand what the image of rum was like, the perception that consumers had of it, before the arrival of Cuban ron ligero.
Woon’s first experiences with rum, according to his tale, happened roughly around 1910, with what we can call old-style rum: dark, dense, heavy, loaded with smells (and often also with the “the right rum stink”), and still used as medicine in many families. Then, he discovered Bacardi. Woon tells us about his astonished and delighted discovery of the new type of rum, which he never calls ron ligero, but simply Bacardi, thus contributing to the creation of its myth (another clue, I believe, of sponsorship). And by telling us about his experience with Bacardi he helps us better understand the impact Cuban rum had on the consumers who discovered it and became passionate about it.
I don’t know the exact dates, but the young Woon discovered Cuban rum a few years after THE ROYAL COMMISSION ON WHISKEY AND OTHER POTABLE SPIRITS (1908) had registered a change in the taste of rum (and also whiskey) consumers. See my series of articles in the January to May 2020 issues of our magazine and in particular the second article, THE VOICE OF JAMAICA: SPECIAL COMMISSIONER NOLAN.
At this point, a reflection and a question come to mind. The rapid and extraordinary success of Cuban rum between the late 1800s and the early 1900s could not have gone unnoticed by traditional British and French rum producers. They surely took heed of, and I believe were also worried about, the creation and development of this new product. It is true that, as we have already said, Cuban rum attracted new consumers, but it was surely appreciated also by many who were already rum consumers, so it quickly became a competitor to be reckoned with for old, traditional producers.
This said, the question is: did the success of Cuban rum, actually the creation of a new type of light, easier, more drinkable rum, etc. influence the production of traditional rums, in particular, the great, historic producers of West Indies rums? And let’s not forget the French rums (excluding agricultural rum which, at that time, was still virtually unknown outside the islands where it was produced). How and when did these historic rums change to adapt to new tastes and new competition? Do their rums today, so elegant, clear, rich, but also pleasant and easy to drink, owe their birth and development, to a certain extent, also to an attempt to respond to the competition from Cuban rum? And later also from other rums that, for the sake of simplicity, we can call “Spanish style”? In particular, given that the Royal Commission’s minutes clearly tell us that in 1908 only Pot Stills were used in Jamaica, when were Column Stills introduced? I don’t know, these are questions to which I don’t have answers, but I would like to know more. If any reader can help me, I thank you in advance.
But it’s time to return to Woon’s book. This time too, I present long excerpts, accompanied by brief notes in italics.
Havana isn’t Cuba, so Woon starts and he tells us about his journey towards Santiago, which he calls “Bacardi Town”
From Camagüei eastward the road runs through monotonous miles of sugar-cane. The train passes many settlements of Haitian cane-cutters, black as coal and almost as naked as Adam and Eve – certainly their habits of living must approximate those of our first parents. If you ever feel tempted to think the Garden of Eden a fine place, take a look at these Adams and these Eves.
Chapter XX - THE RUM THAT CURED A KING AND PICKLED A NATION” –This Chapter is dedicated to his experience with traditional rum and to Bacardi and its mythology.
“From my earliest boyhood rum has exercised a romantic influence over me. I remember at the age of nine reading Stevenson’s couplet:
Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest-
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
And for years afterward the thought of a bottle of rum was irresistibly connected with fifteen roistering pirates, the skull-and-cross bones on their cock-hats and double-edged knives in their teeth, sitting on an iron-bound box belonging to a dead man. Only afterward I learned that ‘Deadman’s Chest’ was the name of an island, a pirate rendezvous.
At the age of thirteen I met my first bottle of rum. There was an old coastguard, said to have been a smuggler, who lived in a disused lighthouse near a village on the English Channel where we went for our holidays, and he was the man with the bottle. He would sit with this bottle – it was all the time the same bottle, square-faced, black and sinister of appearance – and a large glass, and as he yarned he would gulp down stuff looking like my grandmother’s blackberry cordial.
When he said that it was rum I gazed fearfully around, but saw no dead man nor any sign of a chest, and was afraid to ask.
Later on, The Demon Rum began to ornament the bill-boards of the English countryside, appeals to a laggard public conscience by a temperance society. On these bill-boards the Demon was a demon indeed – an evil-faced creature with horns and a horrible grimace, and a tail which curled around the helpless bodies of his dying and despairing disciples.These posters made a deep impression on my adolescent mind, and on my bad nights – I was troubled with bronchial catarrh – I would dream feverishly of a frightful fiend who would invade my slumbers, branding a bottle and grinning horribly.
Then, one day, when I had taken French leave of school and had adventured far, I found myself under piles of blankets in a hot country, alternately sweating and chilled to the bone. And the medicine was served me hot and black, a tumbler an hour, and I knew then that even a demon has his uses.
Later still, in Europe, I found that the Demon was considered an indispensable item in every household. No French wife would be so foolish as to forget always to have on hand a supply of that sovereign remedy for chills, colds and la grippe, Rum.
But it was not until after American prohibition narrowed the field of alcoholic beverages that I made the acquaintance of the Demon’s Cuban product – a clear, limpid liquid which, in some secret process, had lost its chocolate color and its pharmaceutical odor, and which could proudly take its place among the whiskeys and brandies of a gentleman’s cellar.
Beginning as a thick, dark-brown drink to make pirates drunk, and passing through its phase as universal medicine, Rum, by the grace of a family named Bacardí and of American Prohibition, had become, in fact, a gentleman’s drink.
The Demon was at last respectable.
And here we find Santiago
Santiago is the chief bailiwick of that notorious old villain, the Demon Rum. Here he has his lair, and here he holds court, surrounded by his general staff: Prince Demijohn, Prime Minister Bottle and Jester Tumbler.
He is a clean-living old scoundrel, though, and his living quarters are much cleaner than many a king’s palace. While he can be short-tempered at times, particularly when seen too much of, his nature generally is genial, his outlook sunny and his temperament sweet – as befits one into whose makeup have gone but two ingredients: vegetable juice and the sun.
As a humble visitor to his capital I expected, naturally, to be invited to his headquarters. Accordingly, I called one morning to the High Priest of his temple, a Jolly, courteous human named Facundo Bacardi, and was graciously accorded an audience.
‘Good morning’ I said, ‘I would have audience with the Demon’
‘He’ll be honored,’ said the High Priest, politely, ‘Come, we’ll go out to his home.’
But we’ll get back to the interview with Facundo Bacardí and his meeting with Don Facundo, not the founder, of course, but one of his descendants, in the future, when we deal with the defense of the Bacardi brand. Then Woon dedicates himself to Bacardi and its history, and begins with a serious mistake. He writes, in fact, that Don Facundo started to produce rum immediately after his arrival in Cub in 1838. However, we know for certain, and even the company’s self-produced mythology is very clear on this, that Don Facundo at first dedicated himself to other activities and only in 1862 did he start selling his own rum.
“His product was considered higher-grade than the ordinary rum of the West-Indies because by a secret process Facundo Bacardí had reduced the color from deep brown to light amber, and somehow done away with the disagreeable ammoniacal taste. Pirates were wont to lay in stocks of this new liqueur, and before very long the fame of the new rum became wide-spread. Spaniards went back to Spain carrying a bottle or two show dear families. The Governor General sent a bottle to the King of Spain with his compliments.
Now come the bats, another important piece of the great corporate mosaic.
There was back of the kitchen where Facundo Bacardi distilled his elixir a tree known as the Moncillo tree.
Now, the Moncillo tree is a great favorite with bats, and so is sugar. Bats living in the tree would come with great chattering of wings each night into the kitchen and eat the molasses from which the rum was made.So many bats there were that the neighborhood began calling the Bacardi product the ‘bat drink’. And Facundo being a wise man in his generation, and being at that time in search of an adequate trademark, used the Bat as a symbol, which is why to this day you will find it a trade-mark on every bottle of Bacardi.
The story goes on
Facundo prospered and died and the business was carried on and vastly extended by his sons Emilio, Facundo and José, who became famous for their charity and benevolence. … toward the end of the century, Emilio had become the best-known and the best-loved and certainly one of the richest men on the island. … The triumph of Emilio’s life came when Alfonso XIII of Spain, then a boy, was taken ill with grippe. The King’s physician, when all remedies failed, prescribed a bottle of the Cuban sugar brandy, then little-known, and the king was cured. There are two prime treasures of the Bacardi family: the famous ‘secret’, which is known only to the president and vice-president and which is said not to be even written on paper but carried in the head, to prevent theft; and the letter which the King’s secretary wrote to Emilio Bacardi thanking him for making a product that has saved His majesty’s life. Just what the ‘secret’ consists of is not even known to the distillery foreman. It is understood that it is a system of filtration through sand, but even that is sometimes denied. Certain other rum firms have spent fortunes trying to duplicate the clear, fragrant liquid, in vain.
According to Gjelten’s “Bacardi and the long fight for Cuba” this happened in 1892. Clearly, the Court’s gratitude was short-lived because it did not prevent the arrest and deportation of Don Emilio in 1896, due to his support for the war of Independence. And regarding the famous (or notorious) secret formula, I can only refer you to my article HISTORY OF CUBAN RUM 12. BACARDI in the July 2023 issue of the magazine.
We have finished, for now, with Woon’s book. See you next month.
Marco Pierini
