Cuba is the ideal place
for growing and processing sugar cane.
It's geographical location makes for the perfect climate:
Heavy rainfall
and abundant sunlight,
the two essential ingredients for growing sugar cane.
You could say that
in sugarcane Cuba has
a natural gift for making rum.
Havana Club rum is produced
from molasses made from sugar cane.
Sugar-rich molasses,
low in acidity,
and with surprising and extraordinary longevity.
These molasses are fermented
with a variety of yeasts
to create a wine,
a very sweet and unique nectar,
which is then distilled.
The distillation columns react
with the aromatic
or alcohol elements in the vapour
to acquire body and strength.
Fractional condensation is used
to convert the vapour into liquid.
There are three types:
head distillates,
heart distillates
and tail distillates.
It's this heart distillate,
the aguardiente,
that makes the Havana Club rum so unique.
As you know, we use a quite lengthy process,
not just a simple distillation.
We have to select the condensates
and identify specific aguardientes for the Havana Club rum.
Another major feature of the process is that, in addition to distillation,
the rum is aged by traditional methods.
That's what makes our rum different,
the way we obtain the aguardientes
and the way we age them.
We can only produce
the tremendously smooth and delicate scents
by aging the highly aromatic aguardientes
in white oak casks.
And here starts another stage
in the Havana Club rum production process.
Havana Club takes care
to select the right type of barrel
for each process.
Some have already been used to mature whisky once or twice before
and aguardientes for 2, 3 or 4 times
before they are used to age rum.
Now the expertise of
the Cuban maestro roneros comes into play.
They must blend, purify and age the rum
and then repeat this process as many times as necessary.
It is this repeated blending and aging
that makes Havana Club rum so unique.
The heritage
handed down from our rum-making forefathers
is a vital part of the process we use to make our rums today.
This mixing, blending and aging,
makes our rum the perfect expression of Cuba's culture,
that very special mixture of races
and cultures that the Cubans themselves regard
as the height of perfection and excellence.
And it is this technique that makes
Havana Club rum
so distinctive and different from any other rum worldwide.
