Havana Club – or is that “Havana Club”? – comes to Florida this week

It truly has not been a good week for Fidel Castro.

On August 3 the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ruled in favor of the Bacardi corporation – in effect, decreeing that the Cuban government no longer owned the Havana Club trademark in the United States, and that Bacardi was now the legal owner of it.

Bacardi wasted no time. It announced today that the new Havana Club will be on sale in Florida later this week as a premium product priced at $20 a bottle. (Just in time to toast Fidel's ill-health, I suppose.) It will roll out to other states as the market warrants. Links to a Miami Herald story and the Bacardi release are below.

The struggle over the Havana Club name dates back more than a decade, and I won't rehash it here. (I touch on it slightly in the book, but, really, a whole other book could be dedicated to the legal wrangling of this case – which includes Bacardi's contributions to Tom Delay and Connie Mack to get favorable measures put into law, Castro's threats to start producing a product called "Coca-Cola," and much, much more.)

The upshot is that there will now be two Havana Club rums for sale globally. The Havana Club produced in Havana by the Castro government (and distributed worldwide by liquor giant Pernod Ricard since 1993), and the Bacardi Havana Club, which will be available only in the United States.

So which should be regarded as the original, and which gets the "quotation marks"?

The Havana-made Havana Club has the rights of claiming terrior, if there is such a thing in rum-making. Bacardi's Havana Club, in contrast, is made in the giant factory in Puerto Rico. Point: Cuban version.

As for taste, I'm not sure. The Miami Herald story quotes Ramon Arechabala, who is from the family who made the original rum in Cuba, as saying the current Cuban product is unpotable. "Fidel lacks the formula of the right Havana Club,'' he said.

I used to be a big fan of Havana Club – it was one of the first rums that I tried years ago that showed me that rum could be complex – but I don't think it's as good as it once was. Perhaps the demand in Europe and Canada caught the Cubans with short stocks of good aged rum, and some shortcuts had to be taken. (Imagine Gaelic shrug of shoulders here.) A former employee of the company once told me diplomatically, "At Havana Club, maybe they use a different calendar than you and me."

Bacardi does not say in its press release that it plans to resurrect the original Arechabala family techniques in distilling the old Havana Club. If I had to guess, I would think that the Havana Club moving into Florida this week will be some variation or blend of the Reserva or Anjeo or Bacardi 8 with a new label. (And I haven't seen the label yet - and I'm curious.)

But a blind tasting might be in order. I would love to sample three bottles: an original, pre-Castro Havana Club, the Pernod Ricard distributed version, and the Bacardi version. Paging Stephen Remsberg.

The U.S. courts and trademark office have spoken. Now let the people decide.

Miami Herald story
Bacardi press release