Rum Wars

words by > D. Heimpel

One Nicaraguan company is using Miami as the entry point to the minds and mouths of the world’s rum drinkers.

A warm wind, salty from the tepid Atlantic, blows through the restaurant, flapping the skirts of two dark-haired hostesses. Peter Iglesias, rumrunner and man about Miami’s South Beach, sits with a watermelon jalapeño mojito in front of him.

“When the rum gods are sitting down and drinking,” he says, under the glitter of Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses, “I see them sitting enjoying a nice golden rum in a big snifter with a cigar.”

Iglesias, a Flor de Caña account manager in South Florida, is one of the foot soldiers of an immense rum empire that traces back to 19th-century Nicaragua. Since establishing its Miami headquarters seven years ago, Flor de Caña has fought its way into South Florida’s viciously competitive rum wars.

Th e brand has also spread as far east as Spain and gained important markets in California and Texas. Tapping into the super-premium rum market, Flor de Caña has set out on an aggressive marketing strategy that has placed bottles in South Florida’s hottest nightclubs and restaurants. Th e next step is earning the favor of America’s rum consumer.

“Th e best way to get the rum on somebody’s mind is to put it in their mouth,” Iglesias says.

Th e long curved bar of the hot restaurant/lounge Table 8 is crowded with stylish men and their high-heeled dates. Iglesias takes a sip from his second drink, a Bubbles and Mango, a combination of thick mango purée, prosecco, Flor de Caña’s seven-year-old rum and angostura bitters. In South Beach’s spirit distribution frenzy, having a signature drink at a restaurant like Table 8 is invaluable—Flor de Caña has three.

Getting on the menu is a laborious process. Iglesias explains the fight for the well: once the company closes a deal, it tries to get its diff erent varieties of rum (a four-year-old year-white, an amber 18-year-old with a gold-etched ceramic bottle) in the back bar, with the hope that patrons will see the brand, remember and buy.

Along with clubs and restaurant deals, Flor de Caña has been actively trying to establish the brand with consumers, which can be difficult when many Americans don’t know what the name means (Flower of the Cane) or how to pronounce it.

“While Flor De Caña has a name, it’s not like a Jack Daniel’s,” says Robert Collins, managing director of Rum Marketing International, the company established to sell Flor De Caña outside of the company’s Central American stronghold. When he showed up in Miami seven years ago, he was the only employee.
Today there are more than 30, spread from Los Angeles to Madrid. “It’s an adventure that has turned into a real job,” he says.

Now the real job is to boost relatively low visibility. Collins and his team have simplified the name and come up with plays on the word Flor—“Flor Play” and “Welcome to Florida,” among others. Like many companies with a brand not familiar to its customers, marketing is the key.

Flor de Caña spent $1.5 million in its South Florida marketing campaign last year, while most companies are spending $1 to $2 million for the whole state, Iglesias says. Th e company is able to market so aggressively because it’s backed by a huge corporation, Grupo Pellas, and more than a hundred years of tradition.

For a crack at what Collins estimates as America’s 21 million case rum market, Grupo Pellas is prepared to flex its economic might. Th e company is a privately owned behemoth, with holdings in energy, sugar, ethanol, automobile, banking and credit card companies. Th e corporation’s Managua headquarters is the biggest office complex in Nicaragua with more than 225,000 square feet of office space.

Founded in 1890, Flor De Caña has grown to be an important piece of the Pellas empire. Producing as many as four million cases annually (Bacardi, the undisputed rum king, produces 20 million worldwide, according to Collins) from facilities in Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador, Flor De Caña is the dominant rum of Central America. And although the company makes some mass-market cane liquor, it’s banking on its slow-aging and natural distillation process to give it an edge in a new market for super-premium rum.

“Th is silent process today yields its fruits,” says Carlos Pellas, CEO of Grupo Pellas. “Flor de Caña rum has conquered the palates of demanding consumers in more than 40 countries.”

“I’m a total rum guy,” says Manuel Nieves, Table 8’s sommelier and a 20-year veteran of the restaurant industry. When he selects the rum for behind the bar, he drinks it warm and out of a wine glass. Nieves looks for the vanilla, citrus and fruit flavors that should come out in the distillation process. “It’s all GIGO: garbage in, garbage out,” he says. Th e idea is similar with champagne, in that you can’t use bad grapes and expect to have great bubbly.

“It’s like the single malt of the rum category,” Collins says. “You want it in a Nica Libre, a short glass with some rum and just a splash of Coke. It’s a drink you sip slow to taste the flavor of the rum, not like a Cuba Libre, which is watered down with a lot of Coke and ice.”

Winning over people like Nieves will be essential in popularizing the brand. Th e company has chosen South Beach’s trendiest bars for a very specific reason—as a destination for the stylish traveler, the area provides the perfect place to introduce a premium liquor.

Flor de Caña is bent on gaining access to the new and limited super-premium rum market, where bottles jump to $40. Th e success of high-end single malt bourbons, expensive vodkas and unblended whiskies is alluring. “For producers like ourselves, this is an exciting outlook for what could be the next hot segment: rum,” Collins says.

Now the throngs sway in Table 8. Both the young and beautiful and the old and rich sit at tables or lean toward each other at the bar. Nieves produces a blue ceramic bottle with gold writing; it’s Centario Gold, Flor de Caña’s 18-year-old rum.

“I see people trying to sell the empty bottles on eBay,” Iglesias says. “You’ve got to come over to my house one Sunday,” he then says to Nieves as he pours the heavy amber liquid into tall snift ers. “If I don’t sit in my backyard with a glass of this and a cigar in my mouth, my whole week is messed up.”

Th e rum’s success or failure will hinge on its ability to appeal to its target market, using every marketing weapon at its disposal, from packaging design to accolades from converted bartenders. But, most importantly, the company seeks to off er an excellent product. It’s smooth and strong and perfect with the salty wind and bustle of Miami’s South Beach. Now it’s up to Flor De Caña to translate that to the rest of the world.