Cuba's Gift
WOOSTER, MARTIN MORSE
Cuba’s Gift Building the market for rum, and a brand name. BY MARTIN MORSE WOOSTER Anyone interested in drinking knows that Bacardi is one of the world’s great brands. It’s the third...
...It’s the third largest spirits company in the world, and owns not only Bacardi rum, but also Martini and Rossi, Dewar’s whiskey, Bombay Sapphire gin, and other products...
...But it’s also a secretive family-owned multinational corporation...
...So while Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba is worth reading, it would have been stronger if it devoted more space to business and less to politics...
...Bacardi was an excellent marketer, and his talents at market ing were exceeded by his son-in-law and successor, Enrique Schueg, who expanded Bacardi Rum’s presence overseas, including an important expansion into Puerto Rico...
...If this volume were a cocktail, it would comprise two parts Cuban history to one part corporate history...
...Paul Nelson, who directed marketing for Bacardi’s U.S...
...Bacardi’s was different...
...This ensured that Bacardi could be consistently made anywhere, making it more of a rootless product like lager beers than older rums, single-malt whiskies, or fi ne wines that are tied to a particular place...
...Whatever the reason for its creation, Bacardi’s light rum proved popular...
...It’s unclear how and if Bacardi will return to Cuba when Fidel and Ra?l Castro die...
...Any family-owned firm that has lasted for more than three generations has a story worth telling, and Tom Gjelten, a correspondent for National Public Radio, has decided to use the family chronicle of the Bacardis as a way to tell the history of Cuba...
...BY MARTIN MORSE WOOSTER Anyone interested in drinking knows that Bacardi is one of the world’s great brands...
...He spends far too much time and energy describing Cuban politics before Fidel Castro and not enough space discussing Bacardi’s history...
...Rum makers are among the world’s oldest enterprises...
...In the 1920s thirsty Americans fl ed Prohibition for Havana to spend their days downing potent Bacardibased cocktails at Sloppy Joe’s and the Plaza...
...We have faith in our nation, and we hope that our country can be organized for the benefi t of all and not just for the few...
...The Bacardi story begins in 1862 when the company’s founder, Facundo Bacardi Mass?, decided to open a distillery in Santiago, Cuba’s second largest city...
...Of the Bacardis who dabbled in radical politics, none was as fervent as Vilma Esp?n, daughter of Bacardi Rum’s chief accountant, who quit the company, joined the revolution, and subsequently married Ra?l Castro...
...the company’s current president, Facundo Bacardi, is the great-great grandson and namesake of the fi rm’s founder...
...But these old rums were dark beverages that often acquired offfl avors...
...Finally, Bacardi Rum was helped when its chemists discovered, in the 1940s, that they could duplicate the fl avor profi le of high-sulfi te Cuban molasses in any Bacardi distillery...
...When Ra?l, Fidel, and their fellow guerrillas ousted the dictator Fulgencio Batista in January 1959, the offi - cial Bacardi company magazine editorialized that “today we Cubans are happy...
...His smartest move was to get the Bacardi trademark documents out of Cuba by mailing them to Bacardi Rum’s Miami offi ces...
...Gjelten also shows that Americans did a great deal to ensure Bacardi Rum’s success...
...As 1959 progressed, hard-line Marxists replaced nonsocialists in Castro’s cabinet...
...The Rough Riders who charged San Juan Hill in the SpanishAmerican War of 1898 came home with a taste for rum, and brought the daiquiri and the Cuba libre (rum and Coca-Cola) back to America with them...
...When Bacardi Rum’s properties were seized in October 1960, the Cuban government at fi rst made no attempt to attack the Bacardi trademarks, apparently because Marxists believed that trademarks weren’t actually property and therefore could be ignored...
...In the 1950s a third generation of Americans flocked to Havana to gamble and take in shows, mostly in Mafi a-controlled nightclubs...
...But by the time the Cuban government had recognized its mistake the Bacardi trademarks were secured, and efforts by the Cuban state to sell “Bacardi” rum overseas were blocked by international courts...
...But Gjelten’s book would have been more successful if the proportions were reversed...
...In his best chapters, Gjelten shows what happened when the Bacardi family was caught in Castro’s takeover of the country...
...In the 1950s Bacardi Rum was the second largest company in Cuba...
...It’s not certain why Bacardi came up with his innovation, but he was the fi rst rum maker to char his barrels and to use American white oak for the barrel staves, which ensured that rum aged in the oak barrels had a light, crisp taste...
...some Caribbean fi rms have been making rum since the 18th century...
...In particular, he gives minimal space to the technical advances that ensured that Bacardi rum became one of the world’s great brands...
...Martin Morse Wooster, senior fellow at the Capital Research Center, writes on beer and spirits for Mid-Atlantic Brewing News and American Brewer...
...Many Bacardi heirs dabbled in radical politics and Bacardi’s president, Jose “Pepin” Bosch, thought of himself as a political liberal and his fi rm as an enlightened company that provided its workers with good benefi ts and high wages...
...Bacardi Rum successfully reorganized, and the firm became a major international player in part because its rum was less fl avorful and blander than rival brands and thus appealed to young people who didn’t like the taste of rum...
...Pepin Bosch prepared for nationalization...
...It was the fi rst light, or “silver,” rum...
...Still, Tom Gjelten’s interesting account shows that a fi rm that has survived being seized by Castro is capable of facing the challenges of dealing with a changing market...
...The fi rm must also determine how to deal with drinkers who increasingly prefer spirits from smaller firms with interesting histories to blander international brands...
...division, told the New York Times in 1987 that Bacardi sold itself to “the na?ve segment, particularly younger females who don’t like the taste of alcohol but like to participate socially...
Vol. 14 • October 2008 • No. 5
