As a big fan of rum, I’ve probably spent way too much time looking at bottles of Bacardi. It’s just something you do when drinking rum punch or a hurricane. But have you ever noticed the Bacardi Bat Logo on the bottle? After a little bit of research I discovered the reason how the Bacardi Bat Logo was chosen to represent this rum.
It’s a good looking logo of a gold bat. There’s also another version with a gold and black bat. There’s no official story of how the bat was chosen to be the symbol of Bacardi Rum but legend has it that when the founder of Bacardi, Don Facundo Bacardí Massó was looking for a factory to start a distillery, he found a building that had fruit bats living up in the roof. You’d think that would have been a deal breaker for this property but not for Bacardi. To him and his wife, this was considered to be a good omen so he bought the factory.
There was probably a bit of respect for the bats because they were known to pollinate sugar cane plants. And they also ate some of the pests that targeted the sugar cane plants. So you can see why they never had them removed.
And then when he was ready to start selling Bacardi Rum, it was his wife who suggested using the Bacardi Bat Logo because it was easily recognizable. And since many of their customers were illiterate (this was in Cuba in the late 1800s), it would be easier for them to pick out the bottle that contained, “el ron de murcielagos”, the rum of the bats.