New Delhi, May 10: Havana Club rum and the Havana cigar have long been the bridge between revolutionary fervour and gentlemanly refinement.
Now they are going to drive contact between India and Cuba. Cuba’s post-Fidel Castro government wants the Havana Club rum bottled in India for the first time, and is sending a team to talk about it — perhaps over a few bottles of the liquid. If the deal is done, Indians can hope for cheaper Cuban rum.
The 19-member Cuban mission, which arrives on May 17 on an 11-day visit, will also be trying to push India’s import of the famed Havana cigar, which at well over Rs 1,000 a stick is becoming a craze in Indian high society.
Although business is high on the agenda of the team — headed by the deputy minister for foreign trade, Eduardo Escandell Amador — no memorandum of understanding is likely to be signed with the Indian government.
Amador will be calling on commerce minister Kamal Nath, agriculture minister Sharad Pawar and junior foreign minister Anand Sharma, but it’s the Indian private sector he is interested in.
“Now the Havana Club rum will be bottled from India and it’s going to be one among the many important developments of this visit,” Nidia Banos Ojeda, the first secretary (trade, economic and scientific co-operation) at the Cuban embassy, told The Telegraph.
The Havana Club brand, established by Jose Arechabala in 1878, was nationalised after the Cuban revolution. But since 1993 the rum has been produced by Havana Club International, a 50:50 joint venture between French company Pernod Ricard and the Cuban government.
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