Bacardi rum.
This is the story I heard directly from an old Cuban man who has died a few years ago.
His story is a kind of different to what you read in Wikipedia and other places.
According to this man, the owners of the distillery to make rum were producing it as regular as the rest of rums. No difference at all. The competence in Cuba existed and some producers of rum were most prosperous than others.
When the war for the independence of Cuba started, the son of the owner of this distillery was called to fight for the Spaniards. The owner was from Catalonia, Spain, and the son was exiled when the war was in progress. However, the distillery was closed. According to my "informant" the family traveled to Spain and stayed over there a few years, I think twelve years if my memory is not failing.
When they returned back to Cuba -or when the distillery opened back after those years of change of power- Mr. Facundo Bacardi, found out that lots of rum stayed inside the containers of wood all that time. When he tested it, he discovered that the flavor was different and better.
Here is when his aged rum started to become famous.
But, for the Bacardi family things didn't come well after another group of decades: The revolution of Fidel Castro.
The Bacardi family had a member who knew chemistry, and after analyzing the ingredients and elements causing that flavor of the aged rum, this family found out that it was not necessary the waiting period of years for aging the rum but just to add chemicals to imitate such a flavor.
The Bacardi family lost their properties after the confiscation made by the revolutionary government.
When the Bacardi family settled in Puerto Rico, it carried the chemistry formulas saved in Bahamas and started the new production of the "aged rum" produced with chemical additives.
And this is the "aged rum" which is consumed up to today.
This old Cuban man went to La Havana, and found out that the old distillery was producing aged rum but with a different name. He brought one bottle of it and in his family reunion in Florida, he opened the bottle covering the label and gave it to his family to taste the flavor. He also brought an "aged Bacardi rum" to be tasted by them. He told me -that in complete agreement- everyone in his family told him that the other rum was superior in everything.
I don't remember the name of that aged rum, but I guess that today many tourists must be enjoying it when visiting Cuba.
This is of course, a different story to what we read about rum Bacardi, and I don't know why, but I do believe this old man, who told me stories about the revolution and the Russian missiles which made me laugh while having that "aged Bacardi rum" bought from the liquor store near his house.
This man had an extraordinary collection of books, to which the sons -attorneys in Florida- told the building manager to disposal at his will and the books went to the trash.
Unfortunately, I didn't visit this old man for months, and when I finally had a camera ready to film him telling his stories, he was dead just two months before. He was to charge me for the filming of his stories, something I didn't care because he was very good doing it, he was funny, the stories with details by lots, he was himself a public library full with books of history of Cuba.
A great lost after his death.
