Juanillo Oliver arrived in Cuba in 1856 as a member of the Spanish military. In 1874, rather than returning to Spain at the end of his military service, Oliver settled in Cuba and delved into the rum business. The original estate and where Oliver began his career was located in the town of Oliver in the center of Cuba, and honours Juanillo Oliver by bearing his surname.
Oliver harvested his own sugar cane to create rum, and word soon spread throughout the nearby area and he gained a following.
In 1898, just before Cuba’s Second War of Independence, the Oliver family estate was subject to an attack as part of the ‘Terra Rasa’ strategy, and it was burnt down, and rum production was abandoned.
However, just under a century later in 1993, Juanillo Oliver’s great-great-grandson Pedro Ramon Oliver returned to Cuba. After realising his family history, he was inspired to continue his great-great-grandfather’s work and produce rum to the same standard after finding hundreds of documents containing the formulas and processes used by Juanillo. However, the new family estate was established in the Dominican Republic.