Bacardi
largest privately held, family-owned spirits company with Cuban origins
Bacardi Limited ( bə-KAR-dee, Spanish: [bakaɾˈði], Catalan: [bəkəɾˈði]) is the largest privately held, family-owned spirits company in the world. Originally known for its Bacardí brand of white rum, it now has a portfolio of more than 200 brands and labels. Founded in Cuba in 1862 by Facundo Bacardí i Massó, a Spanish businessman born in Sitges, Bacardi Limited has been family-owned for seven generations, and employs more than 8,000 people with sales in approximately 170 countries. Bacardi Limited is the group of companies as a whole and includes Bacardi International Limited.
Bacardi Limited is headquartered in Hamilton, Bermuda, and has a board of directors led by the original founder's great-great-grandson, Facundo L. Bacardí, the board's chairman. The company's Cathedral of Rum in Puerto Rico, the largest rum distillery in the world, produces 85% of Bacardi rum worldwide, while the remaining 15% originates from distilleries in Mexico and India.
History
Early history
Facundo Bacardí Massó, a Spanish wine merchant, was born in Sitges, Catalonia, Spain, on October 16, 1814, and immigrated to Santiago, Cuba, in 1830. At the time, rum was cheaply made and not considered a refined drink, and rarely sold in upmarket taverns or purchased by the growing emerging middle class on the island. Facundo began attempting to "tame" rum by isolating a proprietary strain of yeast harvested from local sugar cane still used in Bacardí production today. This yeast gives Bacardí rum its flavour profile.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q685395. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1862, 1814 and 1830.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bacardi” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.