Rum Historian by Marco Pierini
A TALE OF RUM 11. PLEASURE ISLAND
In the second half of the 1800s Cuba, which was still part of the Spanish empire, came on the scene as a major rum producer. I know nowadays, for many rum enthusiasts, Cuba and rum are largely synonymous, but historically Cuba is a latecomer to the rum world. For centuries producing rum was forbidden, with harsh penalties, all over the Spanish empire. The official reason was that it was harmful for the consumers’ health, in reality the prohibition was meant to defend the interests of the powerful Spanish wine and brandy lobbies, which saw in rum a dangerous competitor. A clandestine production existed, which over time came to be often tolerated by the authorities, but in limited quantities and of poor quality. Only at the end of the 1700s did the Spanish Crown lift the prohibition and allow the production, sale and legal export of rum, or rather, aguardiente de caña (sugarcane burning water), as it was called.
The question of the name is quite complicated: for example, the Real Orden of 23 of February 1796 (regarding sugar and sugar-related matters) calls it aguardiente rum and since the beginning of the 1800s the common spelling was rum, exact copy of the original English word. Towards the middle of the century the word ron started to be used too, and later the two terms, ron and aguardiente, began to differentiate, the former indicating the quality product and the latter the cheap product. Today the two terms have yet more different meanings, more on that in future articles.
Anyway, after the liberalization of trade, production increased and quality improved a bit. According to Manuel Moreno Fraginals in his great work “EL INGENIO Complejo económico-social Cuban del azúcar” (1978), in the year 1814, Cuba already exported 4,000,000 liters of rum (roughly, a little less than 1 million US gallons). On the Island, the aguardiente was plentiful and cheap, thus slaves, free blacks and poor whites drank it in abundance, while the upper classes drank imported Jamaica rum. According to many testimonies, the Cubans, first of all the women, used large quantities of aguardiente for personal cleanliness too.
After 1820 things changed and Cuba became a major producer of sugar, with large investments and advanced technologies, among which, for example, the first railway in 1837, before Spain and other European countries. Great Plantations dotted the Island, changing the landscape and the social fabric. Yet, despite the enormous importance of sugarcane plantations, Cuba did not become simply another "sugar island". “The explanation for this is that the sugar boom did not simply turn Cuba into a plantation society, as is often assumed. It also turned it into one of the most dynamic and modern regions in the world, a place that offered some opportunities to free immigrants and that would become even more attractive after the slave traffic ended. During the first half of the 19th century GDP per capita was higher than in the US: Cuba was then more urban than England and the Netherlands, presumably the most urban countries in the world. It had, during the 19th century, more physicians per capita than Great Britain and France; the seventh railroad in the world – a dozen years before the colonial metropolis - organized labor; and higher wages, schooling, and literacy rates than in more than a dozen European countries.”(J. C. Moya “Cuba: immigration and emigration” 2013)
Cuban distillers, this time with the help of the Spanish Crown, did their part investing time, energy and money to improve the quality of rum. In the 1840s, great distilleries were born in Havana, Matanzas and Cárdenas, and about 1850 they seem to have begun to obtain good rum; the great spirit industry took off with a large development in the second half of the century.
As often happens when a backward country undergoes an industrial transformation, entrepreneurs are usually prepared to adopt innovative manufacture processes. Thus, Cuban distillers introduced a few important technical innovations. First of all, they chose to perform a short fermentation, 24/36 hours, which results in more neutral, light alcohol, unlike typical British rums. The wash is then distilled accurately; at first they bought the most advanced, innovative pot stills on the market, and sometimes they designed and manufactured new ones. Very soon Cuba was among the first countries to adopt the Column Still and continuous distillation. It was also among the first to filter the distillate with carbon-based filters to remove unpleasant flavors and odors. Finally, last but absolutely not least, perhaps for the first time it was deliberately decided not to drink the rum fresh, but to age it in wooden casks for some time before putting it on the market. It seems that a Pedro Diago, owner of the Santa Elena plantation and sugar mill was the first to intentionally age the spirits, even if not yet in wood barrels but in pottery jars, buried in the earth.
It is worth spending a few words on this. Today, the aging of rum is a normal, traditional, time honored procedure; in short, it is taken for granted that rum must be aged. But that’s not historically true; on the contrary, it is a relatively recent innovation. For centuries the barrel was only a means to transport rum and other goods, that is, it had the same function as today’s containers. In the producing countries, rum was drunk fresh, it was then put into the barrels for transport and when, months later, it reached London or Boston someone realized that it tasted different, better. A proper history of rum aging is yet to be written, but as far as I know the first evidence of the awareness that aging improves rum is in a letter written in 1702 by an Isaac Norris, a Philadelphia merchant. Here is the text: “I could not get all Bbds [that is Barbados] rum therefore bought some of Jno Budd made of melass here and mixt it. I think it only wants to age to taste well and is strong enough”. As time went by, more testimonies like this can be found, but perhaps – I say again, perhaps, as I have not researched this issue – the practice of putting rum to age in wooden barrels to improve it became common only in the second half of the 1800s.
But, back to Cuba. By 1860, there were more than 1,000 rum distilleries and Havana publishing houses were printing many books or booklets on distillation, often translating the most up-to-date works published in France and Great Britain. In Cuba, a new type of rum was born, the ron lįgero (light rum). It was purer, more neutral, with fewer congeners, it had a pleasant, light smell, it was easy to drink and mix. Among the pioneers there was a Catalan immigrant who in 1862, in Santiago, set up his own distillery: his name was Facundo Bacardį Massó. Soon, this new type of rum intercepted a change going on in consumer taste (something like that happened also with whisky). Regarding its quality, there has been frequent mention of secret formulas, but the success of Cuban rum is the final product of a patient process of trials and errors; better filtrate here, longer aging there, utmost attention to details, temperature, ventilation, light and shade, ripeness of the sugarcane, quality of the molasses, right choice of the madeira selected for the aging casks and, above all else, the skill of accomplished technicians (soon called maestros roneros), to balance all these factors, or better still, more than skill, the art of using them correctly. Last, but not least, Bacardi first, but then the other Cuban producers too, very early on attached great importance to another modern innovation: marketing. Many more brands were born in quick succession; between 1860 and 1890, dozens of new producers arrived on the market, with new kinds of rum, new brands and new visual images; many others arrived at the turn of the century.
In the meantime, in 1902, after a bloody war against Spain and the American military intervention, Cuba became (more or less) an independent Republic. In the following decades, in spite of the endless violence, dramatic corruption, military revolts, gangsterism and sporadic military interventions by the United States, the new Republic also experienced spectacular economic growth and prosperity for a part of its population. The development of the large rum producers at the beginning of 1900s shows the strength of the economy and society in Cuba. It is one of those cases, rare in Latin America, where large companies are born and develop with local capital, owned and managed by local entrepreneurs.
The real triumph of Cuban rum arrived a bit later. In a clear case of heterogenesis of intents, it was the American Prohibition that spurred the success of Cuban rum. In 1920 the United States entered the Prohibition Era: the prohibition to produce, import and export alcoholic beverages. It is possibly the most notorious crime-favoring law of all times. Americans wanted to drink alcohol and the rest of the world went on producing and selling it legally, so contraband, often called Rum-Running, took off and hundreds of vessels of all kinds brought alcohol into the US. They often dropped anchor just outside the territorial waters, outside the jurisdiction of the American authorities, forming long lines of vessels, the so-called Rum Row. The ships unloaded the boxes of alcohol onto real fleets of fast boats, which, defying the Coast Guard, brought them onto land. From there, largely thanks to the networks of organized crime, alcohol reached the Speakeasies, the homes and the throats of American people. Unfortunately, it was often of poor quality.
But it was not always so. American drinkers could find better products too, if they were prepared to pay more and many of these good quality products came from Cuba. The port of Havana became one of the major bootlegging centers. It only makes sense, from Cuba came a lot of rum, but also a lot of whisky, cognac, wine, etc. Many ships coming from Europe stopped over at Havana, where they legally unloaded their cargo of spirits. These spirits were then illicitly transported into the US. The city profited greatly from this trafficking, but then, alcohol was legal in Cuba. Therefore, Cuban authorities often turned a blind eye and, in spite of intense pressure from the USA, contraband was de facto almost always tolerated. The smugglers coming from Cuba headed mainly for the South of the States, where “A thousand thirsty beaches” (L. Lindquist Dorr, 2018) eagerly awaited them.
For those who can afford it, there was an even better alternative: not wait for rum and the other spirits to make it home, but go and drink them directly in Cuba. The island is very close, it is beautiful, tropical, exotic and the rum is good, plentiful and can be consumed legally, without any problems. The bars and clubs pulled out all the stops to attract the American customers (and not only Americans, many members of the European elites discovered Cuba in those years) with new cocktails and new attractions. Movie stars, singers, intellectuals, millionaires led the way, then crowds of holiday-makers poured into the Island. New airlines, new ferry companies were born. The beverage industry, the entertainment industry, the club scene reached a never-before seen dimension and quality.
Among all the spirits, rum was the one which most benefited from this situation: “By banning the sale of all beverage alcohol in the United States, prohibitionists did what no island distiller could have dared hope for: They pulled weary old rum out of its shallow grave, not only infusing it with life, but giving it a bit of swagger and a touch of class.”(W. Curtis “And a Bottle of Rum” 2006).
Prohibition ended, at last, in 1933, but the success of Cuba and its rum lasts even after and its bars became legendary: Sloppy Joe’s, Bodeguita del Medio, Floridita etc.
For instance, in 1948 Hilario Alonso Sanchez published “El arte del cantinero o los vinos y los licores” (more or less: “The art of Cuban Bartenders or The Wines and the Spirits”), a monumental book, cultivated, full of recipes, tips, information, a clear sign of the self-awareness and self-esteem of the island’s bartenders.
American tourists found in Cuba not only rum, but also music, shows, night clubs, gambling houses and brothels, many brothels with sexual attractions of any kind and for any taste. After all, the island was formally independent, but for all practical purposes it was almost an American protectorate; the tourists felt safe, protected, as if they were at home, but with more freedom and exoticism. Havana became the new entertainment capital of the world: in the 1950s it boasted more orchestras than Paris.
To sum up, for the American tourists Cuba became a veritable Pleasure Island and Cuban Rum finally made it into the Hall of Fame.
Marco Pierini
