Bacardi

Origin : The turbulent story of Bacardi dates back to 1814 with the birth of the Catalan Don Facundo Bacardí Massó. Emigrating from Spain to Cuba in 1830, Don Facundo and his family worked hard establishing themselves as business owners in Santiago de Cuba. Despite being forced to return to Spain due to a series of earthquakes and an outbreak of cholera, Don Facundo continued to persevere as a Cuban business man, even enduring the closure of his first business in 1855. However fortune soon smiled in several ways for Don Facundo:

• Cuba had become the largest producer of sugar in the Caribbean
• The Spanish Crown had in 1796 overturned a previous Royal Decree that had banned the production of early rums and were now actively promoting the production of hard liquor to satisfy the tastes of the elite of the Spanish Empire
• Clara Astié, the godmother of Amalia Bacardí passed away, leaving her estate to Don Facundo's wife.

Not only did they inherit the house, but also its tenant, the French Cuban José León Boutellier who ran a small distillery there producing cognac and boiled sweets. After agreeing a new rent arrangement with José, Facundo was granted use of the pot still and together they began to experiment with the methods of Rum distillation. The results of their exploits in charcoal filtering and aging in American oak barrels was a more refined and palatable form of rum.

In 1862 they bought their own distillery in Santiago and called it ""Bacardí, Boutellier, y Compañia"". The distillery contained a copper and cast-iron alembic used for the distillation of rum. It was also home to a colony of fruit bats that lived in the rafters, which at the suggestion of Amalia, would come to be the symbolic logo of the company. By 1874 Don Facundo and his sons bought out Boutellier's stake and renamed their distillery ""Bacardí y Compañia"".

With the new business flourishing, Don Facundo handed the reigns over to his sons Emilio and Facundo, who became company president and Master Distiller respectively. Facundo, having been given the secret rum formula by his father continued to perfect his father's experimentations in rum production and created several blends of his own.

During the 1880s Emilio and the Bacardí family gave their support to the growing independence movement, resulting in Emilio serving four years in a Spanish prison. The Cuban War of Independence came to an end three months after the destruction of the USS Maine in 1898, which had resulted in the Spanish-American War. During the American occupation of Cuba, the popularity of Bacardí had grown, especially after the inventions of the Daiquirí and the original Cuba Libre, by the American Mining Engineer Jennings S. Cox and the U.S. Signal Corps in Havana, respectively.

In the following decades Emilio Bacardí expanded the Company, building bottling facilities in Spain and New York, although American Prohibition soon caused the closure of the New York plant. During the time of Prohibition, Cuba had become a popular destination for American tourists and by the 1920s Facundo was inviting those same tourists to come to Cuba to beat the Prohibition.

With the death of Emilio in 1922, Emilio's brother-in-law Enrique Schueg took over the running of the Bacardí Company and during his time he diversified the company, opening production facilities in Mexico in 1931 and Puerto Rico in 1936, as well as the New York City based imports company in 1944. While Enrique may not have lived to see the good fortune of this diversification, having passed on the mantel to his son José M. ""Pepín"" Bosch in 1949, it was this decision which saved the company after the Cuban revolution.

Despite initially supporting Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolutionaries, the newly formed Cuban totalitarian regime seized the Compañía Ron 'Bacardi' S.A.'s assets in Cuba. Moving to the production facilities in Mexico and Puerto Rico and then in turn expanding to build new facilities and offices in the US, the Bahamas and Bermuda, the Bacardi Company has grown to become one of the most recognisable rum brands in the world.

Today Bacardi produces and sells at least a dozen different rums internationally, as well as a multitude of flavoured rums and other rum based drinks, such as the Bacardi Breezer. The Bacardi Superior brand is so well known in itself, that some people will not even realise that they're drinking rum. After several acquisitions, the company's brand portfolio now tops more than 200 brands and labels including Grey Goose vodka, Bombay Sapphire gin and Martini vermouth.

Having become the world's largest privately held spirits company, Bacardi's fortunes appear all positive. However, the origins in Cuba still cause the company issues, with all Bacardi in America being labelled with ""Case fundada en 1862"" and all references to Cuba being played down, whereas elsewhere in the world Bacardi promote their Cuban heritage so much that many people believe that the rum still comes from Cuba, with all bottles labelled with ""Casa fundada en Cuba - Estd 1862"". Whether Bacardi will ever occupy the Bacardi Building in Havana again is debatable, but there is no denying that the Bacardi Company has grown from its humble beginnings into one of the most recognisable brands in the world.

Translated : "Faithful to the aging developments of the best rum in the world, first created in 1862 by Don Bacardi Funcundo, you can see his influence on one of our finest and most exquisite products: Casa Bacardi."

"The experience of over 142 years has led us to create a unique combination of different rums to result in this complex aged rum presented in a magestic bottle."