History of the Seagram Dynasty.
IIRC, Cuba was the gem in their crown, though it's never mentioned. Sugar cane is the key to making cheap liquor, especially if it's farmed with slave labor. Castro and the Commies prevented Cuba from turning into the next Hot Springs...so the mob shifted their plans to Vegas. Back the the Bronfmans (Bronfman = Liquor man in Yiddish)
Early History
In 1889 the Bronfman family fled Czarist anti-Semitic pogroms in Bessarabia to make their home in Canada. A wealthy family, they were accompanied by their rabbi and two servants. In the century since, the Bronfmans (whose name, ironically, means "liquor man" in Yiddish) experienced a brief period of poverty but then went on to build one of the world's largest distilling businesses.
When Prohibition came to Canada in 1916, the Bronfmans decided to leave the hotel business and enter the whiskey trade. Canada had implemented Prohibition only to appease foes of drinking; in reality, alcohol consumption remained high in Canada. The Bronfmans took advantage of the imprecise Canadian Prohibition laws to maximize their bootlegging profits. Sam Bronfman bought the Bonaventure Liquor Store Company, conveniently located near the downtown railway in Montreal, in 1916. People traveling to the "dry" west could stock up on liquor before boarding the train. Business was brisk until March 1918, when a law was passed that prohibited the manufacture or importation of alcohol containing more than 2.5 percent spirits.
The prohibition excluded alcohol intended for medicinal purposes, so Harry Bronfman promptly went into the drug business. He bought a Dewar's whiskey sales contract from the Hudson's Bay Company and began selling straight liquor through drugstores and to processors who made "medicinal" mixtures. One such concoction was known as a Dandy Bracer--Liver and Kidney Cure; it contained sugar, molasses, bluestone, 36 percent alcohol, and tobacco.
When the Volstead Act instituted Prohibition in the United States in 1919, the Bronfmans imported 300,000 gallons of alcohol from the United States, enough to make 800,000 gallons of whiskey. They reduced 65-overproof white alcohol to the required bottling strength by mixing it with water, some real whiskey and a bit of burnt sugar to provide color. A shot of sulfuric acid brought on a quick simulated aging process. The Bronfmans' mixing equipment could fill and label 1,000 bottles an hour. All the whiskey came out of the same vats, but it was bottled under several different labels to raise the liquor's value. Materials cost of the whiskey mixture was no more than $5.25 per gallon. Bottled, the whiskey sold for the equivalent of $25 a gallon.
Post-Prohibition Expansion
Prohibition ended in the United States in 1933. The next year a conservative lawyer, Richard Bedford Bennett, was chosen to head the Canadian Conservative Party and immediately launched an investigation into the liquor smuggling industry. The Bronfmans were arrested, and a year later they were tried. The judge threw the case out of court. (Color me shocked)
http://www.company-histories.com/The-Seagram-Company-Ltd-Company-History.html