Bacardi

Bacardi's core range is a ladder of ages, from the white Carta Blanca through the Añejo Cuatro, the Reserva Ocho and the Gran Reserva Diez up to the Facundo line, and next to it runs a shelf of flavoured products such as Razz, Limon, the Spiced and Oakheart. The Carta Blanca is built as a white rum for mixing, a neutral cocktail base rather than a sipper, and that is exactly how the RumX community files it. The Cuatro at four years is the bridge, the Reserva Ocho at a minimum of eight years is the step into the tasting glass, and the Diez at ten years brings a darker, oakier profile. At the top of the ladder sit the Facundo line, named after the founder, around the ten-year Facundo Eximo, and limited releases such as the Gran Reserva Limitada.

Yes, Bacardi's core range, from the Carta Blanca to the Reserva Ocho, is rum in the sense of the EU regulation: distilled from molasses, at least 37.5 percent alcohol, no flavouring. Next to it Bacardi sells flavoured products such as the Razz with raspberry flavour at 32 percent, Limon, the Spiced at 35 percent and Oakheart, which RumX lists as spirit drinks on a rum base. In the EU a spirit may only be called rum if it is not flavoured, has at least 37.5 % ABV and contains no more than 20 g/L of sweetening; these products miss the first criterion, some the second as well. On every RumX product page the category sits right next to the name, so you see at a glance where a diverging classification applies.

Bacardi was founded in 1862 in Santiago de Cuba, but since the 1960 expropriation it has been made outside Cuba, today mainly in Cataño on Puerto Rico. After the revolution the house was expropriated without compensation, the family carried the trademarks and the yeast strain abroad and rebuilt the business in exile, and the Cuban distillery became a global company. Cataño is the largest rum distillery in the world and carries around 85 percent of production, the rest comes from Tultitlán in Mexico among others. So the label no longer says Cuba, but the style, light, clean and built for mixing, is still the Cuban one of 1862.

Bacardi is made from sugar cane molasses, fermented with the house yeast strain the company has cultivated since 1862, distilled on column stills into a heavier, more aromatic and a very light, near-neutral distillate, aged separately in ex-bourbon casks, then blended and charcoal-filtered. Yeast and filter both go back to founder Don Facundo Bacardí Massó: he isolated his own yeast strain and filtered the spirit through charcoal, creating the first deliberately light, mild rum, the counter-model to the rough cane spirits of his day. That style is what made the Daiquiri and the Cuba Libre possible in the first place. The Carta Blanca is filtered even after ageing, which strips its colour and some of its edges. The tropical climate speeds up maturation, so an eight-year Ocho has seen more cask than the same number would mean in a Scottish warehouse.

The classics are the Mojito, the Daiquiri, the Cuba Libre and the Piña Colada, all built on the Carta Blanca, whose neutral character lets the other ingredients carry the drink. The Carta Negra, which the RumX community describes with honey and roasted notes, gives long drinks more depth, and the Reserva Ocho makes an excellent rum old fashioned.

Bacardi sells its own Havana Club, made in Puerto Rico and sold only in the United States, based on a claim it bought from the brand's founders, while most of the world knows the Cuban Havana Club from Pernod Ricard. It is the most curious Bacardi story, about a brand the house never founded: the founding Arechabala family let the US trademark lapse after the revolution, Cuba registered it, and in 1997 Bacardi bought the exiled family's claim. Behind the dispute sits more than nostalgia, it is the question of who owns a Cuban origin when the company lives on in exile. The full story, including Cuba's side of it, is on our Havana Club page.