Vintage Booze Reviews: Tasting A 1948 Cuban Bacardi Rum

It’s been a long time since anyone thought of Bacardi as a Cuban rum. They’ve been distilling in Puerto Rico and Mexico for many decades, and until recently they also had a distillery in the Bahamas. Their corporate headquarters is in Bermuda, presumably for tax reasons. But for almost a century, from the brand’s founding in 1862 until its Santiago distillery was seized by the Castro regime in 1960, Bacardi was the Cuban rum — then as now, the most popular rum in the world, and the brand which transformed the category from the rough-hewn, fiery stuff known as “kill-devil” to the smooth, sophisticated spirit we know today — even if many rum aficionados think today’s Bacardi has taken it too far in that direction.

Bacardi was known for its white rum, which was used in daiquiris and its own Bacardi cocktail (the brand went to court to establish that to be called a Bacardi cocktail, it had to use Bacardi — which sounds perfectly reasonable to me). But they also made aged rum. Well, the white rum is aged too, for a minimum of 12 months, but it’s then filtered to remove the color and some of the flavor. What I’m referring to is what some people might call a “dark” rum, with an amber color inherited from the barrels in which it’s aged. And it’s a bottle of that aged Bacardi, distilled and aged in Cuba and bottled there in 1948, that I opened and tasted.

Pre-Castro Cuban Bacardi has been a holy grail for me, one of those spirits of immense historical significance, and a window into a past that can never be recaptured. I had no idea what to expect, but I wasn’t disappointed. This is a rum I’d drink for pleasure as well as for “research,” to say nothing of bragging rights. Here’s video evidence that I really did taste it (and it’s my first YouTube video as well). Check it out!