Halfway through the last century, the Jerez wine-making firm Sánchez Romate Hnos. set up an office in Cárdenas, Cuba, where the finest Jerez wines and brandies were regularly dispatched in order to later send the casks and bottles through-out the Caribbean.

In 1948, Juan Jiménez Villalba, one of the firm’s ablest foremen, was sent to Cuba and entrusted with looking after the company’s wines and brandies. There he observed that once the wines had been dispatched, the casks’ matchless characteristics made them excellent for the local Cuban distillers to age their rum in.

Some colonial estates and sugar refineries dedicated to growing sugar cane and rum distilling, such as Ingenio Manacas, traded their rum with Juan for Jerez sherry casks. This exchange was no doubt of great benefit to both parties.

Following the Cuban Revolution Juan Jiménez Villalba succeeded, with a great deal of effort, in recuperating some of these rum casks which had previously held sherry. Once they had been shipped from Cuba back to Jerez, the determined foreman looked after them with great care, and created a small solera in our Jerez winery.

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