Bacardi is Thinking of Distributing Cognac Baron Otard in the USA

Bacardi Logo

Bacardi is a privately-owned spirit company controlled by the Bacardi family and founded in 1862. Originally from Cuba the family has moved a great deal between Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico and Florida as the political situations changed and they had to adjust and moved to a safer haven across the years.

This company has much merit and is responsible for a great deal of contributions in the spirit industry but to some extent also in their political influences such as over Cuba, and cultural influences such as art. In the spirit industry they great contribution was to make rum a premium spirit by (1) filtering rums in such a way to increase its purity and (2) by aging rums to mellow them. For everyone Bacardi is synonymous to rum but they carry a strong list of brands often times leader in other categories. For instance, they own Grey Goose Vodka, Dewar's Scotch, Benedictine, Bombay Sapphire, and Martini & Rossi, and many more ...

Cognac Baron Otard Logo

In fact, they own Cognac Otard, or rather Cognac Baron Otard as it was re-branded at the end of 2011, but they have not sold directly Cognac Baron Otard  in the United States. Robert Furniss-Roe, president of Bacardi North America,  said Bacardi is trying to tap more into the dark side of spirits, launching its first cognac in the United States early this summer 2012. There is the possibility that they use a different brand even for the USA.

Source: Martinne Geller, March 14 2012 (Reuters)

www.bacardi.com

www.baronotard.com

What's in Common between a Stradivarius and a Cognac?

Old and Modern Violin

Old violins are always better than new ones. Expensive violins are better than cheap ones. One could say that this is the same for cognac!

Professor Claudia Fritz of the University of Paris VI and Joseph Curtin, a violin-maker have discovered that this opinion is biased. Twenty one professinal violinists were given to compare blindfolded a Stradivarius and a new quality violin. In this comparison, the Stradivarius were estimated at about 3 millions USD each versus the modern violin were about 30 thousand dollars each. Obviously, they could not compare the Stradivarius against cheap violins but against substantial violins made using modern technology.

One simple question was enough to say a lot: "given the chance, which violin would you want to take home?". The results are quite revealing since the majority of players clearly indicated the modern violins as being better. This study suggests that it is hard for people to be objective when estimating subjective measures as emotional as the feeling given by playing an instrument. This emotion is even more enhanced when one knows the value given to the instrument.

I wonder if this study would be true for cognacs as one may question the alleged superiority of the old cognacs over younger cognacs, and of the superiority of expensive cognacs over affordable cognacs. Now that we have 3D printing technology could it be that the Stradivarius status is jeopardized? Could we ever think of a liquid-D printing technology where we would be able to replicate on demand our favorite cognacs.

I am just day dreaming!

Please Sir! Print me a cognac...

http://brain4biz.wordpress.com/2012/01/09/brand-and-item-excellence-just-about-marketing-and-social-status/

http://www.economist.com/node/18114327

Photo: Source: Didacool, Wikipedia