Cuban rum. This is a bit of a different type of bottle talk, since I don’t actually have the bottles, but here we have samples of 3 different Cuban rums that my good friend very generously offered to share with me after his recent trip to Cuba.

From L -> R, we have Havana Club 7, Havana Club Selección de Maestros, and Santiago de Cuba 12. All 3 are fantastic and a great representation of the mastery of Cuba’s rum distillers and blenders. These are solid additions for any rum enthusiast’s collection and I will definitely be treasuring these until I can get my hands on some more (international vacation time?)

Cuba is less than 100 miles away from the US, and yet we cannot import any real Cuban rum here (the Havana Club you may have recently started seeing on the shelves here is not real Cuban Havana Club and is actually Puerto Rican rum made by Bacardi under the HC label – aka completely different rum).

The US Cuba embargo began in the late 50s/early 60s during the Cold War era, unfortunately restricting our access to Cuban rum. In recent years, the travel ban has been slowly softened to allow limited travel, and hence letting these rums into my life.

If anyone is interested in reading more about Cuban rum, Matt Pietrek has written an incredibly thorough post on it over on CocktailWonk. Check it out!