A new rum from a young company, and a legend to go with it.

The Kraken is not an old rum house but a brand built from scratch by an American spirits company. The packaging trade site The Dieline presented it on 28 October 2009 as “the newest offering from Proximo Spirits,” describing it as an imported black rum from the Caribbean blended with “over 11 secret spices” and named after the mythical sea beast said to have wrecked tall ships and rum-running vessels. English Wikipedia, citing Shanken News Daily, dates the rum’s introduction to 2010, so its arrival is best placed at the turn of 2009 and 2010.

The owner was itself a young business. English Wikipedia says Proximo Spirits was founded in 2007 by the Beckmann family, who also own and run the tequila maker Jose Cuervo, and that it is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey; the encyclopedia describes Proximo as a subsidiary of Becle, the Beckmann family’s publicly listed Mexican spirits company. The Kraken’s own website says the brand’s trademarks are owned in the United States by Proximo Spirits and that the rum is imported by Proximo in Jersey City.

The name came with a story. The brand’s website tells a legend of a lone ship carrying barrels of spiced rum across the Caribbean, dragged under by giant tentacles; one barrel survived, “stained by the ink of The Beast,” and became The Kraken Rum. The company presents that ink as the reason the rum is black. The beast doubles as the brand’s mascot.

A bottle to hang from a hook and a squid on the label.

The Kraken’s best-known design asset is its bottle. English Wikipedia, citing The Dieline, says it is styled after a Victorian rum bottle, with two hoop handles that recall the old practice of hanging bottles up to keep them from breaking. The bottle carries a black-and-white paper label with an illustration of a giant squid, captioned with its scientific name, Architeuthis dux, in the manner of a natural-history plate. The back label describes the contents as imported rum from the Caribbean blended with natural flavours.

What goes into the bottle is described less precisely. The company calls its rum Caribbean and does not name a distillery on the pages checked. English Wikipedia, citing rum writers, says the base rum at launch came from Trinidad, was distilled from molasses and aged one to two years before being blended with spices; the brand now says its Black Spiced Rum uses 13 secret spices. A Gold Spiced rum followed in March 2023, which English Wikipedia, citing the company, describes as a Dominican rum aged for two years.

The range has also moved into cans. In June 2022 The Spirits Business reported that Proximo had launched three canned ready-to-drink cocktails under the Kraken name in selected US states — Kraken & Cola, Kraken & Ginger Beer and a Kraken Rum Punch. Premixed versions had appeared earlier in Australia in 2020, English Wikipedia says.

Special bottles extend the illustrated look. In February 2024 the brand began a Legendary Survivor Series of limited editions, the UK title Verge Magazine reported; the first, The Lighthouse Keeper, was illustrated by the artist Justin Estcourt and had a white gloss finish and a foiled logo, and the series was planned with a different artist for each bottle. The brand said it would give £1 from each bottle sold to the marine conservation charity PADI AWARE.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all American whiskey and rum names: Jim Beam, Maker’s Mark, Wild Turkey, Havana Club, Captain Morgan, Sailor Jerry and The Kraken. American whiskey and rum brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family distilleries that still carry a founder’s name to names that now belong to much larger drinks groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a neighbourhood bar to a supermarket shelf.

A spirits brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single bottling than by a bottle, a label and the story the name promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its spirits are actually distilled and bottled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its spirits are made and how its bottles and labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Tentacles on billboards, trophies and ice.

The Kraken’s advertising has leaned on its monster. In January 2013 Adweek reported on two three-dimensional billboards in Chicago in which the sea monster’s tentacle reaches into an apartment to seize a passer-by — a man on one board, a woman on the other. The work was by the New York agency Dead As We Know It, which English Wikipedia says also made animated television spots for the brand in a 19th-century scientific style and a mobile game in which players steer a ship through kraken-infested waters. Later in 2013, English Wikipedia says, citing Studio Daily, Blur Studio made animated spots of the kraken destroying a ship, set to Bobby Darin’s 1959 recording of “Beyond the Sea.”

Sponsorship has followed the same theme. In January 2012 The Guardian described Kraken Rum as the “innovative” sponsor of the Kitschies, a British award for speculative fiction whose winners received hand-made tentacle trophies. When Seattle’s new hockey team chose its name in July 2020, Kraken Rum became the Seattle Kraken’s official rum sponsor, English Wikipedia says, citing The Seattle Times and NBC Sports Northwest. In the UK the brand runs a trade club, The League of Darkness, launched in 2017, through which pubs and bars earn points for rewards, Bar Magazine reported in June 2019.

For a design guide, The Kraken shows how a new brand can borrow the look of age — a Victorian bottle shape, an engraved-style natural-history label and a legend — and tie its campaigns to one creature. Compare Sailor Jerry and Captain Morgan, two other spiced rums built around a character, and see our note on The Kraken’s lettering. For this guide we use an ink black, a deep-sea teal and a label bone with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep The Kraken’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.