David Cid, one of two brand masters for Bacardi Limited, is unabashedly a Bacardi Rum advocate and isn’t afraid to let people know it.
“I’m one of the most passionate people about the brand,” he said.
His territory is vast – the Western Hemisphere – which means he’s the face of Bacardi throughout the United States, Canada and the Caribbean. He’s originally from Puerto Rico – Bacardi’s home in exile – but said he’s travelling 85 per cent of the time.
In October, he paid a visit the Cayman Islands, where he gave a series of rum tasting seminars for hospitality industry workers at the offices of Cayman Distributors Ltd.
“You’re going to have the best breakfast you ever had,” he joked with the participants of one morning session.
Cid started by giving a little history of Bacardi, which was founded in 1862 in Santiago de Cuba by Don Facundo Bacardi Massó, a Spainard who had immigrated to Cuba 32 years earlier. Before Bacardi, rum was a crude, harsh drink that came directly from the still and was called white dog. Don Facundo experimented with various techniques, including charcoal filtration and oak barrel aging to create a smoother, more drinkable rum.
“It was the world’s first premium white rum. Bacardi Superior was the first to use charcoal filtration,” Cid said. “Don Facundo’s goal was to raise the image of rum.”
The company enjoyed almost a century of success until their Cuban operations were nationalised by Fidel Castro’s government after the Cuban revolution. The Bacardi operations moved to Puerto Rico, where it had established a plant in 1936.
Moving on to the tasting, Cid said Bacardi rums were intentionally made with a level of dryness – or non-sweetness – to allow them to mix well with other ingredients. To demonstrate this quality in Bacardi Superior, Cid had participants take a small sip of the rum straight. The taste had just a hint of sweetness, but the burn of alcohol was quite evident.
Then Cid had everyone pour an equal amount of bottled spring water in the glass, effectively diluting the alcohol by half. Then everyone was asked to taste the rum again. Not only was the rum a lot smoother in terms of the alcohol burn, but it was noticeably sweeter.
“No other rum does the transfer to sweet like that as Bacardi Superior,” he said.
Cid said he enjoys drinking Bacardi Superior with just water, even though not many people drink it that way.
Cid said mixability is what has made Bacardi Superior such a successful product.
“When you add Bacardi to a cocktail, the goal is to add balance without being overpowering,” he said, noting the rum’s light and subtle flavours.
The large majority of rum, including Bacardi, is made from molasses, although some rum is made from sugar cane juice that is thickened into a syrup, Cid said. Some companies add molasses to distilled rum for flavour. In addition, he said all non-white rums – and in fact all dark spirits – have industrial caramel added to them as a colour unifier.
The participants tasted a number of rums, including Bacardi Select, Bacardi Añejo – which is made exclusively at the company’s plant in Mexico – Bacardi 8, Bacardi Reserva Limitada and Bacardi Oakheart, an age spiced rum that just entered the Cayman market in October.
Because rum production isn’t as heavily regulated as the production of most other spirits and various countries of origin can set different guidelines on labelling with regard to age, Cid said it’s difficult to know the age of a rum based only on what its label says. Some countries allow rum producers to put the age of the oldest rum on the bottle, even if 99 per cent of the blended rum inside is of a younger age, Cid said, adding Bacardi puts the age of the youngest rum on the bottle of its Bacardi 8.
He said aging in a tropical climate makes rum mature three to four times faster than in a non-tropical climate, so that a bottle of tropically aged Bacardi 8 has the same maturity characteristics as a bottle of scotch that had been aged for 24 years or more.
“Maturity is development; age is the passing of time,” he said.
Cid said older isn’t always better with rum because the rum can become too acidic.
“The longer you age a rum past a certain point, the worse it gets,” he said. “Anyone in the [rum] industry will tell you that rum with five or six years of tropical aging is the best rum; anyone.”
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