Bacardi goes upmarket with range of vintage rums
Print Edition
Bacardi, long known for its low-priced, white rums to mix with cola or fruit juices during the hot summer months, is launching a limited edition line of high-end rums culled from the family’s century-old private stock, in the hope of changing the world’s perception of its flagship spirit.
Bermuda-based Bacardi Limited, owns 200 spirit labels, including Bombay Sapphire gin and Grey Goose vodka. This month it began distributing 12,000 bottles of the sipping rums, some aged up to 23 years, in New York and Miami.
Unlike Bacardi’s ubiquitous US$15-per-bottle rums, the four in the Facundo Collection, named for Bacardi’s founder and family patriarch Don Facundo Bacardi Masso, are meant to be served neat, with a splash of water or an ice cube.
“We have about 300 rums in our family’s private reserve,” said Facundo L. Bacardi, chairman of Bacardi Limited and the founder’s great-great-grandson. “We’ve experimented with them for 150 years in a variety of different ways, but no one thought about commercializing them.”
The Facundo collection includes four varieties, varying from Neo, an up to eight-year-old clear rum that sells for US$45 a bottle, to the top-of-the-line Paraiso which is aged up to 23 years in white oak barrels, emerging as a deep amber color and retailing for US$250.
Each comes in a heavy glass bottle adorned with images reminiscent of Bacardi’s long history, including its signature bat logo or a glass relief of Havana’s landmark Bacardi Building, the company’s former Art Deco headquarters which was seized by the Castro regime in 1960.
The darker rums are “a step above what we associate with Bacardi,” said Ed Hamilton, a Chicago-based rum importer and industry consultant. “Historically, Bacardi has neglected their aged rums while concentrating on their younger white and gold rums, which are the best-selling rums in the world.”
Managing Director Toby Whitmoyer said the time is ripe to introduce drinkers to a higher-end product.
“With the Facundo collection we’ve taken on the responsibility to show them the way, and raise the bar so more people can discover these rums,” he said.
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