Bacardi Limited

The world’s largest family-owned spirits company, based in Bermuda.

Facundo Bacardí Massó was born in Spain in 1814, migrating to Cuba at the age of 16. There he transformed the relatively harsh and inexpensive local rum into a more refined and mellow spirit, partly by a process of charcoal filtration and partly by ageing it in white oak barrels. The result was the world’s first ‘white’ rum. The Bacardi company was officially founded in February 1862 in Santiago de Cuba. Bacardi’s white rum took the drinking world by storm, but in 1960 the company was forced to leave Cuba after the Communist Castro regime confiscated all its assets without compensation. Bacardi had already relocated substantial assets to the Bahamas following the Communist revolution, and in 1965 duly moved its headquarters to Bermuda, where it continues to be based. Bacardi acquired the Scotch whisky business of John Dewar & Sons from Diageo in 1998.