Bacardi Superior

Bacardi Superior is the light Cuban-heritage white rum that effectively wrote the blueprint for the category, a molasses spirit distilled on a column still and charcoal-filtered to a clean, neutral-leaning profile. It is unsweetened and bottled at 37.5%, made expressly as a cocktail base rather than a sipping rum, and it should be judged on that footing.

Taken neat it is plainly a mixer: the aroma is dominated by alcohol with only a faint woody edge, and the palate offers light coconut and a hint of wood before the spirit fades quickly. That neutrality is the point. In a Cuba Libre, a daiquiri or any simple highball it does its job cleanly and inexpensively, slipping into the background where a white rum is meant to sit. Anyone after flavour or a glass to nurse should look elsewhere, but as a workhorse for mixing it is exactly what it sets out to be.