Gjelten chronicles how Bacardi lost its homeland, but not its brand, to Fidel Castro

Gjelten chronicles how Bacardi lost its homeland, but not its brand, to
Fidel Castro
By WILL WEISSERT | Associated Press Writer
1:03 PM EDT, August 28, 2008

"Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba" (Viking, 365 pages, $27.95), by
Tom Gjelten: Bacardi is the world's top-selling rum with annual sales of
20 million cases in more than 150 countries. But it does not sell a drop
in Cuba, where founder Facundo Bacardi first opened a tin-roofed,
dirt-floored distillery on Matadero Street in the eastern city of
Santiago in 1862.

With thorough reporting and an eye for rich, often quirky detail,
veteran National Public Radio correspondent Tom Gjelten traces the story
of the Bacardi family, whose product helped shape Cuba's soul until
Fidel Castro nationalized its company's facilities in 1960.

The Bacardis took communist Cuba to court to preserve their
international trademark and eventually built a rum empire using
operations in Puerto Rico, Mexico, Brazil and the Bahamas. "We just
didn't think to register the Bacardi trademark, so we lost it," Enrique
Oltuski said years later. "We had the factory that produced the real
Bacardi rum, but we couldn't keep the name."

Facundo Bacardi was the first Cuban mayor of Santiago and helped pioneer
Cuban style rum, known for its light, dry, smoothness. He devised a
charcoal filter system and began aging rum in oak barrels. Bacardi
racked up international awards after 1900, and soon its rum became known
as "the one that has made Cuba famous."

Prohibition in the United States sent Americans scurrying to Cuba,
thirsty for Bacardi. A contemporary advertisement featured a Bacardi bat
— the company's corporate logo, which Gjelten notes is somewhat creepy —
carrying an Uncle Sam figure clutching an empty glass across the Straits
of Florida to Cuba. By 1935, The New York Times cited Bacardi as a
proper noun that had entered U.S. lexicon as a generic term, like
Kleenex. Ernest Hemingway often mentioned Bacardi in his novels.

Eager to export to the American market without import duties, the
company set up a distillery in Puerto Rico in 1936. According to
Gjelten, Bacardi discovered that the key to consistent flavor was Cuban
molasses. Through tweaks in the distilling process, however, engineers
corrected discrepancies so that rum with identical flavor to that
produced in Cuba could be made elsewhere.

The Bacardis opposed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista and supported
Fidel Castro, even granting some workers leave to join his rebel forces.
Vilma Espin, late wife of Cuban President Raul Castro, was the daughter
of a Bacardi accountant and one Bacardi family member even knitted caps
and stockings for Castro rebels fighting Batista's forces.

The rebels issued a decree that Bacardi facilities were not to be
attacked, and the company's chief executive, Jose "Pepin" Bosch,
accompanied Castro on his first trip to the United States after taking
power in 1959. Bosch ducked out early, however, already afraid of where
Castro was leading the government.

After nationalizing Bacardi, Cuba eventually began producing Havana Club
rum, a brand it usurped from the Arechabala family, Bacardi competitors
who did not fight to keep their trademarks after nationalization.

Bacardi eventually bought the naming rights to Havana Club from the
Arechabalas and began selling its own version of Havana Club in the
United States, touching off more legal battles with Cuba that have yet
to be fully resolved.

The case is complicated but, as Gjelten notes, its underlying issues are
simple: "When could Cuban rum be sold in the United States, by what
company and under what label?"

Like so many facets of U.S.-Cuba relations, answering those questions is
far from easy.

(This version CORRECTS to correct to Enrique Oltuski from Castro.)

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/cuba/sns-ap-book-review-bacardi-and-cuba,0,612081.story