Reply #1: Push by Cuba makes rum brand a rising star worldwide

[Judi Lynn]

Feb. 12, 2007, 10:23PM
Push by Cuba makes rum brand a rising star worldwide

By DOREEN HEMLOCK
South Florida Sun-sentinel

HAVANA, CUBA — The restaurant serves chicken with rum sauce. In the courtyard, a bartender whips up a new cocktail: fresh-squeezed sugar cane and orange juices with white rum. The guided tour concludes with a tasting, complete with the finest blends.

Tourists flock daily to the Havana Club Rum Museum in this Caribbean capital, just one plank in an aggressive marketing push that has made the government-backed brand Cuba's top selling rum and a rising star worldwide.

Sales are so brisk that industry tracker IWSR of London recently named the brand the fastest-growing internationally in the decade that ended in 2005. Havana Club sales jumped 16.4 percent a year during the period, reaching 2.6 million cases in 2005, ISWR said in its Elite Brands List. A case has 9 liters.

Within Cuba, Havana Club dominates rum sales, its growth closely linked to the surge in tourism, now topping 2 million visitors a year.

But it's in Europe where the brand is making its biggest inroads and ranks No. 2 among all rums, the company said.

Growth stems partly from a marketing campaign that associates Havana Club with Cuba's vibrant music and culture.
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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/4548389.html