so i have a bottle of Havana Club. i got it in Havana. i also got to tour the factory, which had cool models of how the technology and the refineries/distilleries changed over time. and the guide shared some interesting trivia. one was that sugar cane arrived for planting on the santa maria. i think it was on a subsequent trip and not the very first crossing. i knew it must have shown up as part of the general suite referred to as "The Columbian Exchange", but damn. another was that the first train to run on tracks in the western hemisphere was in cuba to haul molasses from some farm sugar cane aggregating and processing compound a few miles in the interior to the refinery for making spirits near the coast. apparently it was some totally wack/bespoke gauge financed and developed just for this use by some colonial administrator/settler type with a lot of capital. there's a train museum in Havana, but i did not get to see it.
anyway, Havana Club was a rum brand owned by a shithead industrialist from Spain. a real "captain of industry" type of latifundia / hacienda asshole. over the decades, the family enjoyed incredible political power under the comprador governments, with one of the scions even being assassinated at some point after they became the boss of the family firm. probably because he was so popular and everybody loved him, right?
anyway, after the revolution the factories, ports, fields, of this massive vertically integrated behemoth were all nationalized. the story ameroids tell is that everything was stolen from this innocent little rich family at gunpoint. and that some [gusano] manager fled to puerto rico and claimed to have the secret recipe unlike all the workers. so the one you can buy at the store in the US has the same label design, except it says "The Real Havana Club". which is hysterical, because if you have to say your shit is real, it aint. also, if you look up the natopedia article, there are these like hagiographies about how this guy supposedly treated his workers to all manner of wonderful employee benefits... benefits that 100% did not exist for cubans in cuba prior to the revolution. it also tries to paint him as this scrappy hard working go getter, but in the same sentence will talk about how a hurricane came in and ripped up his factories but "he" was able to rapidly rebuild, get production back up and running super fast. must be because he was so entrepreneurial i guess.
The US Havana club is made by Bacardi using “the old recipe” or something. It is objectively trash. The actual Havana club which is exported to places like Europe though a joint venture is really good
so i have a bottle of Havana Club. i got it in Havana. i also got to tour the factory, which had cool models of how the technology and the refineries/distilleries changed over time. and the guide shared some interesting trivia. one was that sugar cane arrived for planting on the santa maria. i think it was on a subsequent trip and not the very first crossing. i knew it must have shown up as part of the general suite referred to as "The Columbian Exchange", but damn. another was that the first train to run on tracks in the western hemisphere was in cuba to haul molasses from some farm sugar cane aggregating and processing compound a few miles in the interior to the refinery for making spirits near the coast. apparently it was some totally wack/bespoke gauge financed and developed just for this use by some colonial administrator/settler type with a lot of capital. there's a train museum in Havana, but i did not get to see it.
anyway, Havana Club was a rum brand owned by a shithead industrialist from Spain. a real "captain of industry" type of latifundia / hacienda asshole. over the decades, the family enjoyed incredible political power under the comprador governments, with one of the scions even being assassinated at some point after they became the boss of the family firm. probably because he was so popular and everybody loved him, right?
anyway, after the revolution the factories, ports, fields, of this massive vertically integrated behemoth were all nationalized. the story ameroids tell is that everything was stolen from this innocent little rich family at gunpoint. and that some [gusano] manager fled to puerto rico and claimed to have the secret recipe unlike all the workers. so the one you can buy at the store in the US has the same label design, except it says "The Real Havana Club". which is hysterical, because if you have to say your shit is real, it aint. also, if you look up the natopedia article, there are these like hagiographies about how this guy supposedly treated his workers to all manner of wonderful employee benefits... benefits that 100% did not exist for cubans in cuba prior to the revolution. it also tries to paint him as this scrappy hard working go getter, but in the same sentence will talk about how a hurricane came in and ripped up his factories but "he" was able to rapidly rebuild, get production back up and running super fast. must be because he was so entrepreneurial i guess.
There's a WHAT?
yeah, it was closed when I was there, tragically. one of my life's most tragically missed opportunities.
The US Havana club is made by Bacardi using “the old recipe” or something. It is objectively trash. The actual Havana club which is exported to places like Europe though a joint venture is really good