Brugal
Andres Montanar Brugal leaves the small town of Sitges, Costa Brava, Catatonia, Spain, in 1880. He settled in Cuba, and after a few years moved to Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic. He buys a coffee finca and in 1888 creates an ingenio azucarero, ingenio Cuba, owns cane plantations, produces sugar and initially agricultural rum by fermenting guarapo, fresh cane juice. In 1888 he founded Brugal & Co., drawing on his rum experience gained during his Cuban years. For 50 years his company grew, until the nationalization in the 1930s of the sugar mill and cane plantations by dictator Trujillo. Instead, the first Brugal warehouse for aging rum in oak barrels dates from 1920. In 1976, with the introduction of Extra Viejo, the company developed the premium rum segment in the Dominican Republic. In 1998, Brugal launched Brugal Limòn, Brugal Pasiòn, and Unico. In 2008, the Scottish group Edrington buys 80 percent of Brugal. Franklin Baez Brugal remains president and the family continues to be responsible for production.
For aging, Brugal uses mainly 190-liter barrels of American oak, previously used for bourbon. In recent years, because of the relationship in the Edrington Group with The Macallan distilleries in Scotland, Brugal has begun experimenting with aging in 500-liter ex-sherry casks, and in recent months also in Pedro Ximenez casks. Brugal ages in 14 warehouses. Each warehouse holds 18,000 barrels, for a total of 250,000. Since the entry of the Edrington Group, a large quantity of European oak barrels already used for sherry has been introduced, which have now become peculiar to two of the range's premium references. In addition, Brugal began in 2013 a renovation project of about 20,000 barrels per year. This is 'static' aging, without any The bottling plant sees 8 lines, whose operations are divided by formats, 5 in the main hall and 3 in a new area. Brugal's employees in the Dominican Republic number about 1,200, 400 in the Puerto Plata plant alone. Brugal's annual production exceeds 42 Million liters, well over 50,000,000 bottles. The main markets are the Dominican Republic's domestic market, Spain, then the U.S., and the fourth world market is Italy.
