Bacardi Limited

The origins of Bacardi Limited are long and storied, dating back to 1862 when Facundo Bacardi and his brother Jose, along with a French wine merchant jointly purchased a distillery in Santiago de Cuba for $3,500. The next 100 years saw the Bacardi rum brand built into a globally respected name, and by 1960 it had offices in Mexico, Puerto Rico, New York and Brazil. It was this international expansion that was the true making of the company, safeguarding it from the asset seizures of Fidel Castro’s new Cuban government that year. While Castro deprived them of their Cuban distillery forever, he was however unable to take their trademarks, and the iconic bat motif if still used by the company to this day.

Bacardi Limited’s involvement in the whisky industry came much later, in 1993 through its acquisition of Martini & Rossi. The Italian vermouth producer had long associations to Scotch whisky through its Clan Munro subsidiary, which it reorganised as William Lawson Distillers in 1972. The company operated William Lawson Distillers as a going concern, continuing to produce its blends and Macduff distillery’s Glen Deveron single malt brand until it was offered the John Dewar & Sons portfolio by Diageo in 1998.

Diageo, newly former by a merger of Guinness and Grand Metropolitan the previous year, had been order by a US anti-trust ruling to divest several of its brands. The deal with Bacardi Limited cost $1.9bn and included Bombay gin alongside the Dewar’s blends and their associated Aultmore, Aberfeldy, Craigellachie and Royal Brackla distilleries. Bacardi Limited then replaced William Lawson Distillers as its Scotch whisky division with the newly acquired John Dewar & Sons, which continues to manage the portfolios of both. Under its guidance, Dewar’s and William Lawson’s became the fifth and sixth biggest selling blends globally, and in 2014 it introduced The Last Great Malts collection, relaunching new single malt brands for the four former Diageo distilleries alongside a new The Deveron brand from Macduff.

Not long after, in March 2015, the company announced its first venture into the American whiskey market with the purchase of Angel’s Envy, a brand established four years prior by former Woodford Reserve master distillery, Lincoln Henderson, and his son. The Angel’s Envy distillery was then opened in Louisville, Kentucky in 2016. The company then added a second American whiskey label to its portfolio in the shape of Stillhouse. Bacardi Limited had invested in the venture initially in 2014, but acquired full control of it in 2019.