Havana Club is a popular brand of Cuban rums distributed globally (except in the United States) by the French Pernod-Ricard company. The brand grew out of a distillery founded by the Arechabala family in Cardenas, Cuba, in 1878. The Havana Club brand was created in 1934, following the repeal of US Prohibition, as a light, crisp rum targeted at the American market. The family left Cuba for Spain with the rise of Fidel Castro, who nationalized the distillery in 1960.
The Arechabala family allowed its trademark registration to lapse in 1973, believing it had no further value. Cubaexport, an enterprise owned by the Cuban government, registered the lapsed mark in the United States in 1976 and sold limited quantities in Cuba and some Eastern European countries. In 1993, Pernod-Ricard formed a joint venture with the government of Cuba to expand global distribution and marketing. Havana Club, like all Cuban goods, was blocked from sales in the United States by a blanket embargo. Nonetheless, by 1998, Havana Club was among the fastest-growing rums in the world, producing more than one million cases annually (both in previously existing distilleries and in ones built expressly for the brand) and gaining adherents in Italy, England, Canada, and elsewhere. As is the Cuban style, Havana Club is a blend of column-distilled molasses-based rums, some quite rich, that are aged and charcoal-filtered before bottling or further aging.
Gjelten, Tom. Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause. New York: Viking, 2008.
By: Wayne Curtis