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Cuban-American businessman Tony Haber (Santiago de Cuba, 1973) has brought back iconic brands from the Island for the exile community and is producing them in the United States. The latest release is the famous Guayabita del Pinar, which is now available for purchase in a "very limited" edition. It can be found at the Total Wine chain in Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, and South Carolina.
Taking advantage of the fact that the Cuban regime has not renewed some rum licenses in the United States, businessman Tony Haber claims he has registered, in addition to Guayabita del Pinar, the brands Santero, Arecha, and Varadero. He has also registered lesser-known brands such as Flor de Habana and Nucay.
La Guayabita del Pinar, which was launched on the market this week, is the result of seven years of effort not only to secure the license but also to successfully reproduce outside of Cuba the famous fruit that gives its name to the rum, which proved to be challenging due to its origin from a wild plant.
The first step was to obtain a seed from a small guava from Cuba. Then came the most challenging part: making it germinate. They conducted tests in the United States, but the heat was too intense for a fruit accustomed to the mild temperatures of Pinar del Río.
Finally, alongside his partner Andrés González Mancilla, a descendant of the creators of Guatemalan Zacapa, Tony Haber has succeeded in establishing the brand outside of the United States.
It has taken three years for the guayabitas taken from Cuba to bear fruit in South and Central America. With the formula in hand, there were no longer any obstacles to recovering the Guayabita del Pinar, which, as reported this week by On Cuba, is a drink created by Genaro Rivera, an Asturian emigrant who settled in Pinar del Río in the 19th century.
What began as a homemade drink, born from improvisation, evolved into a commercial brand in 1892 under the leadership of the Basque entrepreneur Lucio Garay Zabala, founder of Casa Garay y Compañía.
With the support of the Garay family, Guayabita del Pinar won international awards such as the Grand Prize in Havana (1911), third place in Rome (1924), and a gold medal in Plovdiv (1988).
However, despite this latest award, La Guayabita del Pinar began to experience its decline after the nationalizations of 1961, when the brand came under the control of the Cuban regime. Although it indeed had some memorable moments in the 80s, it eventually dwindled to the present day. Evidence of this is that the regime didn't even bother to maintain the license in the United States, as Tony Haber argues.
The businessman summarizes very well what has happened and his intentions: "La Guayabita del Pinar was destroyed in Cuba and now we are going to revive it in the United States. It has taken seven years, but it is now for sale."
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