Havana Club

The story starts in 1878, when José Arechabala bought a distillery in Cárdenas and named it La Vizcaya after his Basque homeland. His family launched the Havana Club brand in 1934, aimed at the American tourists pouring into Cuba during Prohibition. 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.

Here it gets messy. 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, now made in Puerto Rico, backed by US laws like Helms-Burton. Pernod Ricard even keeps a backup brand, Havanista, ready for the day the embargo lifts.

Havana Club is distilled at two plants 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.

Cuban rum 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.

On RumX the 7 Años is by far the most-reviewed Havana Club, the dependable everyday Cuban, while the premium Selección de Maestros and the cigar-friendly Unión sit a little higher in the low 8s. These are light, mixable rums built for the Mojito and the Daiquiri, so they score solid rather than spectacular, exactly what a Cuban house aims for.