Havana Club

Havana Club runs from the young Añejo Blanco and the 3 Años through the 7 Años, the dependable everyday Cuban, up to premium bottlings such as the Selección de Maestros and the cigar-friendly Unión. The 3 and 7 Años are the everyday staples and the heart of a good Mojito: light, mixable rums built for the Mojito and the Daiquiri, exactly what a Cuban house aims for. In the RumX community's tasting notes the 7 Años shows wood, caramel, spice and vanilla, the Selección de Maestros adds tobacco and dried fruit, and the Unión brings dark chocolate, tobacco and leather.

Havana Club is made in Cuba, at two distilleries near Havana. Ronera Santa Cruz is the workhorse behind the younger rums, the Añejo Blanco and the 3 Años, which together are over 60 percent of all the brand ships. Ronera San José, built in 2007, makes the heavier aguardiente for the older and premium expressions. Both run column stills on 100 percent Cuban molasses, cutting a floral spirit at around 75 percent.

Because of the US embargo on Cuban goods the Cuban-made Havana Club cannot be sold there, and the Havana Club on American shelves is a different rum: a Bacardi product made in Puerto Rico, based on a trademark claim Bacardi bought from the founding Arechabala family. The Arechabalas let the US trademark lapse in 1973, Cuban state exporter Cubaexport registered it in 1976, and in 1997 the exiled family sold their claim to Bacardi for 1.25 million dollars. Since then Bacardi has sold its own US-only Havana Club, backed by US laws like Helms-Burton. Pernod Ricard even keeps a backup brand, Havanista, ready for the day the embargo lifts.

The Arechabala family launched Havana Club in 1934, aimed at the American tourists pouring into Cuba during Prohibition. The story starts in 1878, when José Arechabala bought a distillery in Cárdenas and named it La Vizcaya after his Basque homeland. After the 1959 revolution the Arechabalas went into exile and never made rum again, and the Cuban state took the name forward, exporting it to the Soviet bloc.

Havana Club is built, not just aged: the aguardiente spends two years in American oak and is charcoal-filtered, then blended with a near-neutral spirit into base rums that are re-aged in old, neutral casks for slow oxidation. About a fifth of every 7 Año batch is blended back into younger rum, so a little very old spirit hides in each bottle. The maestros roneros, led by names like Asbel Morales, guard the whole craft.