Rum Review: Bacardi Superior White Rum

If we’re talking about rum, then at some point we need to talk about the 800 pound elephant (or bat, in this case) in the room. Bacardi is a name that is synonymous with rum — and, in some ways, is responsible for the spirit’s current popularity. Their Superior White Rum is something that can be found in most bars around the world, but the question has to be asked — given the current competition on the market, is it good?


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History

Don Facundo Bacardi Masso was born on October 14th, 1814 in Barcelona, Spain as the son of a bricklayer. While he was growing up, his older brothers left home and traveled to Cuba seeking a better life and found success opening a small mercantile shop in Santiago. In 1830, Facundo followed his brothers and started working in their store, saving up enough money to open his own shop just a few years later in 1843 and marry his wife Amalia.

Things went well initially — Facundo and Amalia had four children in Cuba before a massive earthquake and a cholera epidemic in 1852 killed two of his children and devastated the local economy. He moved the family back home to safety and upon returning to the island later, he found his business in shambles. Sugar was one of the primary industries on the island, and a slump in the price of sugar had kicked off a recession.

But where most people saw disaster, Facundo saw opportunity. Rum had long been considered a crude and low quality spirit, but with the price of sugar so dramatically low, there was an opening for someone to create a desirable rum product and make a fortune. And that’s what Facundo set out to do, enlisting the help of local José León Boutellier and finally settling on a process using a unique proprietary strain of yeast, charcoal filtration, and maturing the end result in oak barrels to create a superior tasting rum.

The first bottles of Bacardi rum were sold through Facundo’s brothers’ store (which was still standing after the earthquake), but soon the product was successful enough that on February 4th, 1862, he was able to purchase a distillery and start mass production. He not only emphasized the importance of a good product, but also good branding — his wife recommended using the fruit bats that inhabited the rafters of the distillery as their logo, and it has stuck ever since. Bats in their culture are a symbol of family, good fortune, and health.

Throughout the years, the Bacardi company has remained a privately owned business, passed down from one generation of the Bacardi family to the next.

Facundo retired in 1877 leaving the business to his son Emilio. The Bacardi family agitated in the 1880’s and 1890’s for Cuban independence, which twice saw Emilio imprisoned for his activities and running the business from jail. When independence was finally achieved with the help of the United States, the Cuba Libre and Daquiri cocktails were invented specifically with Bacardi rum. Emilio would eventually become the first democratically elected mayor of Santiago in the 1890s.

In the 1920’s, the company started to branch out, investing in a beer for the first time in 1927. In 1936, after prohibition ended in the US, they opened a distillery in Puerto Rico to service the American market. During the Cuban Revolution, the family had backed the rebels, but they resisted the rise of Castro and once the country had turned towards communism in 1965, they moved their headquarters to Bermuda.

Bacardi would merge in 1993 with the Italian Martini & Rossi beverage company to create the Bacardi-Martini group, which continued to branch out and acquire more brands. Today, the business produces everything from rum to tequila to scotch to cognac, and pretty much everything in between.

Product

This is truly an international process, which makes sense for such an international brand.

The rum starts at their distillery in Puerto Rico where Bacardi uses blackstrap molasses (a viscous sugary liquid that’s the byproduct of sugar production) as the raw ingredients for its rum. Going back to its 1850s roots, this was the absolute cheapest sugar product available, and remains a cheap source of distillate to this day. The molasses is added to a vat of water, and a strain of yeast that has been cultivated since the original batches in the 1860s is added to ferment the mixture and create alcohol.

From here, Bacardi uses a process called “parallel distillation” to create their raw rum spirit. The fermented liquid is distilled in a process where two different versions of the spirit is created. On one side, half the liquid is distilled in one single run in a column still to produce what is called the “aguardiente” spirit. On the other side, the liquid is processed through a series of column stills to produce a lighter “redestilado” spirit.

Once produced, the spirits are shipped to their Jacksonville, Florida location for aging, blending, and bottling. For the Superior version of their white rum, the spirit comes from batches that have been aged a minimum of one year but no more than two years in previously-used, lightly-charred white oak whiskey barrels. Once aged, the rum is passed through a charcoal filtration process as pioneered by Fecundo, and then blended and bottled for sale.

Packaging

There’s not a whole lot to the design of this bottle.

Overall, it’s a pretty standard shape — straight walls, round body, and a sharp taper at the shoulder to a medium length neck. The bottle is topped off with a metal screw-on cap.

As for the label, it’s a white background with the Bacardi name on the front. There’s the famous fruit bat logo front and center, a small silver strip below that has some more details about the product, and that’s about it. Which, to be honest, I kinda like. I think it’s the right approach for this level of rum, and the smaller size of the label allows more of that crystal clear rum to shine through the bottle.


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Neat

This spirit is pretty much as close to crystal clear as I expect you can make a white rum, maybe with just a hint of blue tint here. Pouring a bit in the glass, this is actually pretty good for a white rum — with some of the lower quality stuff this can be almost like pure rubbing alcohol, but there’s something else in here. I get some vanilla, a bit of toasted sugar, and marshmallows coming through, all primarily tied back to that sugar based primary ingredient and with some nice saturation.

Those aromas translate very nicely into the flavors as well. The toasted sugar is probably the biggest component that I see, with some light vanilla in the background and a good sugary marshmallow note accompanying the whole experience. There’s no bitterness or bite here, just good clean fun.

On Ice

I was dreading this portion of the test, because I figured that the lighter flavors would skedaddle and leave me with nothing more than a sugar-based vodka. Interestingly, though, I think that a bit of ice actually makes this better.

Instead of removing flavors, the added ice actually lets some of the more delicate and lighter notes come out. Specifically, the vanilla is now accompanied by some almonds and just a hint of tropical fruit like mangos and bananas waaaaaay in the background.

Cocktail (Daquiri)

This is good, but I think the lime juice is doing most of the heavy lifting here.

Really, this is just a glass full of chilled, diluted, alcoholic lime juice that’s been sweetened. The simple sugar is balancing out the bite from the lime juice, but there’s virtually no assist from the rum. The vanilla and almond flavors we saw before either aren’t strong enough to be noticed, or have simply disappeared.

It isn’t terrible, but when you’d be equally well served using a vodka I’d say you’ve failed the test here.

Fizz (Dark and Stormy)

I make my Dark and Stormy the exact same way I make my Kentucky Mule, only swapping the whiskey for rum. So really what we end up with is a daquiri, minus the simple syrup, but with some ginger beer added. And given how well the daquiri worked, I’m sure you can guess how well this went.

It’s really just a Moscow Mule at this point, with the rum adding alcohol content and nothing else. The cocktail is unbalanced and one note.


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Overall Rating

As a white rum, we already know that the flavor isn’t going to be very strong. It’s definitely not going to knock your socks off with some strange funk or a bunch of spices. And for that reason most of the cocktails we’ve made with this don’t really have those flavors coming through as much as you’d expect with something funky like a Smith & Cross Jamaican Rum. Which is a little disappointing.

That said, there’s still plenty of good stuff to say here. It’s a well done white rum that doesn’t make me run for the hills with any bitterness or unpleasant flavors. It might not be knocking my socks off, but it’s something I wouldn’t be ashamed to put out on the bar at a party.

Bacardi Superior
Produced By: Bacardi
Owned By: Bacardi
Production Location: Puerto Rico, United States
Classification: White Rum
Aging: No Age Statement (NAS)
Proof: 40% ABV
Price: $11.99 / 750 ml
Product Website: Product Website
Overall Rating:
All reviews are evaluated within the context of their specific spirit classification as specified above. Click here to check out similar spirits we have reviewed.

Overall Rating: 3/5
A good solid rum with standard rum flavors, and that’s about it.


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2 comments

  1. I have been drinking Bacardi Superior white for over 30 years. But now the taste is so awful that it’s not even drinkable. I’m not sure why someone decided to change a good thing, but you are going to lose million of buyers, me included. So sad to say good bye to my old friend.

  2. Have been a big Bacardi fan…but no more….I have over poured and wasted my last Rum due to no dribbler in bottle….Bacardi claims saving the planet but the bottle is plastic…if we are dying because of these dribblers then so be it…it’s because Bacardi is trying to save money and be cheap…

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