I guess that
this battle is going to be one of those never ending battles that will rival
the 100 year war before it is over. It
is an interesting “rum war” with so many different tactics that continue to
keep both sides in the press almost weekly.
It's a fight
over ownership, heritage, revolution and rum.
It's a dispute that has lasted for decades over who is a
"real" Cuban, and pits US rum powerhouse Bacardi against French
spirits giant Pernod Ricard and its association with the Castro regime to
produce Havana Club, the best known Cuban brand. It involves court battles over trademarks,
legislation in the US Congress, and deep feelings of nostalgia and loss.
Bacardi has
launched an all-out marketing offensive to stake its claim to the US market for
its version of Havana Club, made with the original recipe purchased in 1994
from the brand's founders, the Arechebala family.
But Pernod
Ricard insists its Havana Club is the authentic version since it is distilled
in Cuba with 100 percent Cuban ingredients.
"Pernod Ricard joined forces with the government in order to get
profits from that stolen property," Bacardi brand executive Roberto
Ramirez told AFP. The Castro
government's Cuba Ron SA swooped in and registered the name with US
authorities, but because of the US trade embargo against the island nation
could not sell Havana Club to the key American market.
Bacardi began selling its Havana Club in 1995, produced
in Puerto Rico and sold in the US market with the slogan: "Forced from
home. Aged in Exile. Forever Cuban."
The Arechebala and Bacardi families were forced from home in the
aftermath of Castro's revolution and had all their assets seized, including
their rum-making factories. While
Bacardi had already established distilleries offshore, including in Puerto
Rico, the Arechebalas, who had been making Havana Club since 1934, and
distilling rum for decades before that, did not have the resources to start
over, so their US trademark lapsed in 1974.
Since 1993, the Cuban company has been co-owned with
Pernod Ricard, the world's number two spirits maker, which sued Bacardi for
using the trademark. The firm dismisses
the Puerto Rican version as an upstart and says Bacardi is misleading consumers
with "false claims" they are the original Havana Club.
“Don't tell us we're not Cuban”. Bacardi has hit back hard, defending its
Cuban roots and its authentic recipe. It also has the support of legislators
from Florida who proposed a new law to ban the US from recognizing trademarks
stolen by the Castro government. In
January, the rum maker released a campaign featuring a Cuban-American walking
through Miami's little Havana -- or real Havana? -- reciting a poem about home. "Forced to leave home, but home never
leaves us. Wherever exile takes us... We walk carrying the musica of our island
and the amber rum born from it," the poem says.
There is a lot more to this story, you can read it at https://www.afp.com/en/products/web-mobile
