Bacardi
Year Founded:1862Location : Hamilton , Bermuda ( current headquarters)Owner : Bacardi LimitedWidely Available?Yes
Bacardi was founded in Santiago de Cuba in 1862 by Facundo Bacardi , a Spanish wine merchant with a dream of transmute rum ’s reputation from cheap booze into a high - end disembodied spirit . He succeeded , come out with the first - ever white-hot rummy , then expand to aged rum . Seven generation later , the rummy producer is now the mankind ’s declamatory family - owned spirit company . Facundo ’s great - great grandson , Facundo L. Bacardi , is on the board of directors of the now - massive pot , which possess Grey Goose vodka , Bombay Sapphire snare , Martini vermouth , and 200 - plus more brands and label .
Though Bacardi was founded in Cuba , you ’d be hard pressed to find loyal Bacardi juicer in Havana today . During the Cuban Revolution , the Bacardi family became staunchly anti - Castro ( specially when the government confiscated the rummy company ’s plus and banned individual property ) and moved their chief home base to the Bahamas in the 1960s .
Flickr/Ed Ivanushkin
Trivia : The company ’s symbolic representation is a fruit bat because the animate being were always tell apart around the distillery , attract by the smell of molasses .
In Pop Culture : Rapper 50 Cent made Bacardi rum a hard - partying staple when he mint the iconic phrase , “ We gon ' sip Bacardi like it ’s your birthday ” in his 2003 hitting , “ In Da Club . ” Daiquiri lover and writer Ernest Hemingway cited the company in his novelsTo Have and Have NotandFor Whom the Bell Tolls . As a kind of thank you , Bacardi throw a party for Hemingway when he won the Nobel Prize in Literature .
At the measure : Bacardi rummy is often used in Cuba Libres . According to Bacardi , the original Cuba Libre was made during the Spanish - American War when Colonel Theodore Roosevelt ( who would by and by become the twenty-sixth U.S. President ) and his gang of Rough Riders bring Coca - Cola and a thirst for cocktails to Havana .
