The Daiquiri at the Havana Club, straight from the pages of Graham Greene

While in Havana, when I wasn’t drinking Mojitos I could often be found in close proximity to a Daiquiri. I already discussed the Daiquiri in detail here, so there is no need to say too much more. Still, it would be a shame not to share a few observations on how the drink is made in Cuba.

First, when you order a Daiquiri in Cuba you are generally asked how you would like it. No, you don’t get offered fifty flavors ranging from blueberry to bubblegum. You simply choose between a Daiquiri Naturál or a Daiquiri Frappé. That is, you can have either a shaken drink served up or a blended drink served with a straw (in some bars the Frappé version is created by shaking with crushed ice rather than blending). Flavored Daiquiris exist too. For example fancy hotel bars may offer Banana Daiquiris and so on. But in your typical Cuban bar a Daiquiri is a simple affair that a drinker can enjoy in either of two ways.

An elegant Daiquiri Naturál in the Hotel Florida

Rather than sweetening Daiquiris solely with sugar or simple syrup, many bars also add a dash of liqueur. This concoction generally remains a simple ‘Daiquiri’ – it does not get labeled a ‘Floridita’ or something similarly fancy sounding. Triple sec is the standard addition, but maraschino is also common. The liqueurs used for this are domestic brands. I never got around to tasting them straight, but I assume they are fairly average.

Possibly I just have the look of a problem customer, but bartenders would often ask how sweet I wanted my Daiquiri. A very sensible question, and one that should be asked more often. Even better, if I asked for a drier Daiquiri I got one. Awesome or not?

There seems to be no real agreement in Cuba as to what glass a Daiquiri should be served in. Depending on the bar you might get your Daiquiri in a cocktail glass, wine glass, or simple tumbler.

Finally, although Daiquiris are widely available in Cuba, they are less popular than the Mojito and Cuba Libre. Tastes have probably changed since Hemingway’s day. These changes may partly result from the recent popularity of Mojitos in the West. Mojitos are definitely the tourist drink in Cuba these days.

A straightforward Daiquiri Frappé at the Hotel Ambos Mundos

So where is the best place in Havana for a Daiquiri?

It certainly isn’t the famous El Floridita.

For those determined to feel the spirit of Hemingway while sipping on their Daiquiri, Hotel Ambos Mundos scores highly for a nice dry version. The simple tumbler they serve it in may appear a touch homely, but Hemingway often drank Daiquiris from tumblers (check the photographs in my earlier Daiquiri post – link above). Naturally, since Hemingway spent several months living and writing in the Hotel Ambos Mundos, he would have drank Daiquiris in this very bar. Not a bad choice.

Slightly further down the street, the quiet Hotel Florida serves a nicely balanced Daiquiri in a wine glass. They also serve Banana Daiquiris should the need arise.

For me, the Most Memorable Daiquiri Award goes to the Havana Club, where my Daiquiri Frappé came elegantly garnished in a cocktail glass, and “frozen so stiffly that it had to be drunk in tiny drops to avoid a sinus-pain”. This really was life as fiction, a drink straight from the pages of Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana, and well worth the trip into the suburbs. This memorable drink was the stiffest Daiquiri Frappé I came across in Havana, a touch sweet, but still very tasty.

Drink appeared a year or so back and has contributed plenty to improving cocktail knowledge in China. There was a time when knowledge-thirsty Chinese bartenders would chase me out of bars. No, they weren’t requesting I settle my tab. They simply wanted me to write down my famous recipe for Pernod and water, which went: “put Pernod in glass, put water in (same) glass”. Thanks to Drink I now get ignored.

Times really have changed. At one time, Pernod and water was my drink partly because Pernod was one of the few imported liquors nobody had got around to faking. Standards really were low. These days, at least in Shanghai, you are spoiled for choice when it comes to finding a decent cocktail.

The cool thing about Drink is that it is a bilingual publication. Rather nicely, this means I get an article published in Chinese without having to actually write the thing in Chinese. It also means Chinese bartenders get good information in their own language, alongside the same material in English. The English very useful, since English is the best language for those inclined to do further research on drinks-related matters.

Previous Chinese language bar industry magazines could be spectacularly bad. I remember an article on Champagne illustrated exclusively with photos of Trappist beer bottles. A story on wine in the same issue revealed that a sophisticated and well-bred woman is instantly recognizable because she will always add her ice cubes before she pours her wine, never afterward. Another piece introducing the major families of spirits and liqueurs did fairly well until confronted with bitters. Aware only of Angostura, unaware of how it was used, but spotting details for a Dutch distributor on the label, the writer winged it. The result was an improbable account of elderly Dutch men swigging from Angostura bottles in between tending to their tulips.

When I get around to it, I will post a couple more articles I have written for Drink.

Street scene outside the famous Bodeguita Del Medio, the little bar that has spent well over half a century promoting itself as the spiritual home of the Mojito

The tropical heat can be a killer, and while in Havana I made sure to stay properly hydrated by drinking lots of Mojitos. This constitutionally prudent habit turned out to have useful side effects, such as affording an excellent opportunity to learn how the Mojito is made in the country of its birth. Little did I know at the time, but the long hours spent lapping up knowledge in stifling barrooms would eventually provide the launching pad for a prestigious writing career with China’s preeminent drinks industry magazine, imaginatively entitled “Drink”. Naturally, I got started by writing about Cuba’s famous export.

A tastier and less touristy Mojito experience than you will find at La Bodeguita

The Mojito-related matter I was most curious to learn about was the famous Yerba Buena – the local name for the mint component of the drink. Yerba Buena is said to have its own unique taste, and every bartender I asked in Havana told me it differed from regular mint. On trying the stuff though I found it tasted just like spearmint. Perhaps Havana’s bartenders are as confused about the English meaning of mint as I am about the Spanish meaning of Yerba Buena? Perhaps I am not much of a mint taster?

Anyway, having tasted Yerba Buena I do not think anyone needs to feel shy about using spearmint in their Mojitos. Still, those trying to be authentic might prefer to go for plants with smaller leaves. The leaves of the Cuban version of the herb looked smaller to what I have seen elsewhere. They may simply be younger plants, but probably the variety is a little different to the common ones. Don’t get enthusiastic and experiment with peppermint. This is not a case where stronger equals better.

Cuban bartenders tend to mix a Mojito by taking a glass and adding sugar, then mint, then lime juice and soda, and only then doing the ‘muddling’. Their version of muddling merely involves light bruising and stirring with a spoon, and only rarely will you see them employ an actual muddler. In other words, Cubans muddle simply. The drink is finished by adding rum and finally ice, though sometimes the ice goes in after the muddling but before the rum. The goal is a clear rum drink with a refreshing mint accent, not a cloudy mess of pulverized vegetation and alcohol. Take note!

“My Daiquiris in El Floridita, and my Mojitos in La Bodeguita” reads the famous self-promotional sign hanging in the Bodeguita del Medio. According to acquaintances, Hemingway was not known for drinking Mojitos, and may never have visited La Bodeguita. The signature is said to be real though, penned by an extremely drunk Hemingway who did not much care what he was signing.

Never once in Cuba did I encounter a Mojito with lime wedges floating around in it. Cubans invariably use only the juice of the lime. Nor did I see Mojitos made with crushed ice. One tale goes that Cuban Mojitos stopped being made with crushed ice when the ice crushing machines broke down after the Revolution and nobody could be found to fix them. This sounds implausible. Virtually every bar in Havana can serve a Daiquiri Frappe, so crushed ice clearly stays out of Mojitos through choice rather than necessity. Therefore, I feel an authentic Cuban Mojito should use cube ice rather than crushed. Besides being slightly more straightforward to put together, the relative clarity of a drink made this way is not unattractive.

One interesting Cuban custom is splashing a little Angostura bitters on the drink as a final touch. Probably around half of all Havana bars serve an Angostura-spiked Mojito as their default, though I don’t think La Bodeguita del Medio is one of them. I rather liked the Angostura variation and have since adopted it.

Mojito production line at La Bodeguita del Medio. The quality here isn’t the best.

Cubans make their Mojitos on the strong side, placing the rum in the foreground rather than drowning it in soda. The soda is never much more than a splash. Occasionally they leave the soda out entirely, though this seems done more as a customer request than as the default style in any given bar. The glasses are not large, and if they are large (e.g. a standard Collins size) they tend not to be filled to the brim. If you are still struggling to adjust to the tropical heat you can yourself needing another pretty quickly.

Finally and most crucially, the better Cuban bartenders distinguish themselves by garnishing the drink with an additional sprig of mint that they gently slap between their palms to release the aromatic oils.

To read more about the Mojito checked out the article I wrote for China Drinks Magazine.

Genever, the original gin, is a true old worldly spirit.

Genever was the original gin. Genever’s old fashioned credentials are highlighted by the way its producers play fast and loose with spelling. You can buy genever, geneva, genievre, jenever, jeniever, junever, and probably more; in English you might also find it called ‘Holland gin’ or ‘square gin’. Mark Twain once said he felt nothing but contempt for a man who could only spell a word one way. We can only imagine the esteem in which Mark Twain would have held genever producers. Genever was the popular gin style in the United States throughout most of the 19^th Century, so Mark Twain surely found frequent occasion to reflect upon the orthographical creativity of its distillers.

Genever has plenty of claims to fame besides creative spelling, boasting a rich and colorful history, as well as an early place at the cocktail bar. While the urbane and clean-shaven London Dry is the dominant gin style today, Genever is its extravagantly whiskered, baccy chewin’, gold prospecting grandpa. Genever may have fallen on hard times and be living under a bridge, but we should consider making its acquaintance. Cocktail bars have done themselves a disservice by showing Genever the door, since Genever was where gin cocktails started. Yes, to enjoy such old worldly delights such as the Fancy Gin Cocktail, the Improved Gin Cocktail, the Gin Fix and the Gin Daisy, you are going to require the company of Genever. The Martinez cocktail, from which the Martini is said to have evolved, is another excuse to give Genever an outing. While the Martinez was originally made with the hard to find Old Tom (a sort of hybrid gin falling somewhere between Genever and London Dry), in its absence Genever is the most flavorsome substitute. London Dry might wow the crowds today, but Genever has been around long enough to have learned a few tricks.

So what is the story behind Genever?

Not the Gin Doctor. . . The 17th Century Dr. Sylvius pictured here did not prescribe his patients gin, making him less fun than his 16th Century predecessor.

Genever and Gin History

Genever was invented in Holland in the late 16^th Century. The confusion surrounding the individual responsible for this advance in human civilization could provide ample material for a boozy remake of Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors. The source of the confusion is the mixing up of two physicians, who shared key characteristics yet lived decades apart*. Both men were called Doctor Sylvius, were physicians and chemists, and were renowned professors at the University of Leyden. The similarities end there though. The first Dr. Sylvius, Sylvius de Bouve, lived in the 16th Century. By inventing Genever, this Dr. Sylvius showed the world that medicine could be tremendously fun. Meanwhile, the second Dr. Sylvius, Franciscus Sylvius, lived in the 17th Century. This Dr. Sylvius contributed to our anatomical knowledge of the brain, a worthy but dull achievement. The second Dr. Sylvius got the last laugh though. The invention of gin was widely misattributed to him, letting him go down in history as the brain researcher with a wild side.

To redress the above injustice we should now raise a glass and toast the original Dr. Sylvius, Sylvius de Bouve, for kindly inventing gin. Exactly what ailment Dr. Sylvius was trying to cure is murky, with applications of the new medicine ranging from back pain to cold feet, insomnia and more. Anyway, while Dr. Sylvius fretted about matters medical, his friends and patients swiftly realized that the new medicine had quite a few non-medicinal applications. History took a new and exciting direction.

In fact, Genever was simply a variation on the korenbrandewijn (literally ‘barley wine’ that had been ‘burnt’ – or distilled), which had been well known in Holland before Dr. Sylvius set up his still. Dr. Sylvius’ innovation was improving the palatability of this firewater by spiking it with a mixture of juniper berries and other aromatics. Juniper berries were a popular flavoring in Europe at the time, even being used in beer; in fact the Sahti beers of Finland are still flavored with juniper. Holland’s recently acquired colonies made exotic spices more available than ever before. Dr. Sylvius produced a superior variant of korenbrandewijn by combining careful distilling, juniper, and spices from around the globe. By 1595 he was selling his product as ‘Genova’.

The original Genever was distilled using pot stills from a malted barley ‘beer’. This produced a rich distillate, not unlike unaged Scotch whiskey. The distillate was then further flavored with juniper and spices. This traditional style of Genever is now known as korenwijn (literally “corn wine”), and remains the most flavorsome style.

The late 19^th and early 20^th centuries saw new styles of Genever emerge, driven by the greater efficiencies offered by column stills as opposed to pot stills, as well as by wartime austerity measures that limited the availability of barley. A distinction developed between Oude (or “old”) and Jonge (or “young”) styles of Genever, corresponding to traditional and modern production methods, respectively. Both these styles are blends of different types of spirits. The Oude style is malty and sweet, and contains a high proportion of korenwijn, cut with neutral grain or other alcohol. The Jonge style is lighter and drier, with a higher proportion of neutral alcohol and a lower proportion of korenwijn. Korenwijn also continues to be sold, but accounts for only a small share of the market.

Dr. Sylvius’ medicine became awfully popular

Through the 17^th, 18^th and 19^th Centuries Holland exported large quantities of Genever to thirsty markets throughout Europe and the Americas. Genever became especially popular in England, helped along by the arrival on the throne of a Dutch king, William of Orange. The English were soon producing their own version of the spirit, which they dubbed ‘gin’. The English gin industry rapidly grew, encouraged by a government that saw gin production as a way of soaking up Britain’s large grain surplus. The first style of English gin to become popular was Old Tom, a sweetened, grain-based, juniper flavored pot still spirit lying somewhere between Genever and London Dry. This was followed by Plymouth Gin, a drier gin with a soft citrus character. Finally London Dry emerged as the dominant style, being based on neutral alcohol produced in column stills, extremely dry and aromatic, and heavily flavored with juniper. Unlike Genever and Old Tom, London Dry was formulated with mixing in mind.

These days it is the English who export their gin around the world, and most Genever remains in producing countries like Holland and Belgium (also a producer). The Dutch and Belgians generally drink it neat, and have entire bars devoted to the stuff. In keeping with the move towards lighter Genever styles, the modern tradition is to drink Genever chilled, preferably from shot glasses stored in the fridge. Genever is often served this way as a chaser to beer. Despite its exceptional cocktail pedigree, Genever is no longer widely used as a cocktail ingredient.

Demystifying Genever classifications and terminology

Modern genever is classified into the following varieties:

Korenwijn: This is the closest thing you will find to the original 16^th Century Genever. Perhaps you can think of it as the ‘single malt’ version of Genever, though the analogy is an imperfect one. This variety comprises 50-70% pure korenwijn (i.e. distillate of malted barley), diluted with between 30-50% neutral distillate (produced from other grains such as corn, molasses, potatoes, or whatever else is deemed suitable). Though not mandatory, Korenwijn is sometimes aged for several years in oak barrels. The result is an extremely malty, rich, and flavorsome spirit, with both the base spirit and the botanicals contributing strongly to the flavor.

Oude (‘Old’) Genever: The ‘old’ refers to traditional production methods rather than aging. This variety contains from 15-50% korenwijn, and can be sweetened with up to 20 gms sugar/liter. The result is a sweet, malty, rich spirit, typically with an oily texture.

Jonge (‘Young’) Genever: The ‘young’ indicates Genever made in the ‘new’ 20^th Century style “i.e. heavily cut with neutral alcohol. This variety contains no more than 15% korenwijn, and no more than 10 gm sugar per liter, making it lighter and drier than the Oude style. This style is closest to the familiar London Dry gin, though the maltiness and light use of aromatics set it apart.

Graanjenever (‘grain Genever’): This is Genever made from 100% grain alcohol. That is, the korenwijn is cut only with grain alcohol, meaning it contains no alcohol made from molasses, potato, or other non-grain ingredients. The grains used to produce the non-korenwijn distillate do not have to malted barley though, so graanjenever is distinct from korenwijn. In practice graanjever is likely to be made from corn or wheat, both of which are cheaper than malted barley. It may also include some malted barley. This type of Genever is generally column distilled. It resembles a more full bodied version of a Jonge Genever.

You may also come across the following terms:

Friesche Genever: So far as I can tell this is not a meaningful designation. It seems to just be an attractive sounding word that some producers slap on their products, not a true indicator of style.

Roggen: There also seem to be rye-based genevers known as ‘roggen’. These spirits may be more rye-based vodkas than Genever though. That is, they may not be flavored with botanicals. If anyone has more information on this please let me know.

There are probably some terms and classifications that I have missed. However, the above should at least provide a start in understanding Genever.

Thus endeth the lesson. . .

Genever Product Comparison
So, having learned about Genever, I guess it is finally time to drink some. I managed to collect four different varieties of Genever, including an oude (Bols), two jonge (Bokma and De Kuyper), and a graanjenever (Bokma). Sadly I could not get hold of a korenwijn. I had also been hoping to include the limited release Genevieve from Anchor Distilling. Unfortunately that was not possible because the product was never made available in New Zealand shops and the New Zealand agent did not want to provide a sample for this tasting. Never mind, collecting four brands for comparison was a pretty good effort given that Genever is not common in New Zealand.

The tasting involved 20 ml samples of each spirit, served at room temperature and in wine glasses. It was not a blind tasting. First the spirits were nosed and impressions recorded. Then they were tasted and impressions recorded. Finally they were cut with a teaspoon of water, tasted again, and impressions recorded. I did not try mixing the spirits into cocktails since I thought they were so obviously different that there was little point comparing them this way.

Bokma Jonge Graanjenever (35%)

Nose: Not too much on the nose besides alcohol. Smells similar to vodka, but differs in having a distinct hint of malt in the background. I cannot detect juniper or other aromatics.

Taste: Taste-wise this is fairly flat. It goes down almost like vodka, but there is a subtle bitterness and aromatic juniper flavor. It has some sweetness and a rich mouth feel. There was no aftertaste to speak of. Adding a teaspoon of water smoothed the flavor and highlighted the juniper. It became very smooth after that.

Overall impression: Not something to sip on, more something to down as a shot. In cocktail terms it could make a more interesting mixer than vodka, but it does not contribute enough flavor to be the backbone of a drink. Think of it more as a way of adding alcohol while contributing a little richness and complexity that would not be there if vodka was used. It is far milder in character than most gins. Still, it has a full bodied sweetness that London dry gins do not offer. I have used this in the past as a base for infusing Oolong tea; it works very well in this role.

Bokma Friesche Genever (38% alc/vol)

Nose: This has a delicate perfumed nose that you can keep on coming back to. At first I could not place the smell. It just reminded me of perfume that had been worn a little too long and begun to fade. Then I realized it was a subtle blend of citrus and a spice I cannot place. It almost seems like musk or something. I guess before doing a gin tasting I should have educated myself some more about spices. Juniper is there as well, but I keep coming back to this other botanical that is reminding me of perfume. Anyway, nosing this stuff is very pleasant and interesting.

Taste: A full bodied mouth-feel together with a dry flavor profile. There is a nice balance of malt, juniper, citrus, and other aromatics. You could not exactly sip this by the fireside like you might a glass of whiskey, but there is more than enough taste to make you want to linger over it. The aftertaste is gently bitter. Adding water brought out a peppery note.

Overall Impression: The dry and delicately balanced taste makes this ideal for drinking straight. However, it could also take center stage in a cocktail like a Martinez. It could work in a Genever Old Fashioned, though a more malty Genever would be better.

De Kuyper JDKZ Geneva (37.1%)

Nose: A perfumed nose that is more robust than the Bokma Friesche. The nose is a blend of citrus and sweet malt, with juniper in there as well. The delicate balance of the Bokma Friesche is lacking, but there is still plenty to appreciate.

Taste: This comes across smoothly. The citrus and malt are very up front, with the combination pleasantly resembling a chocolate orange. As you swallow you get a burst of juniper. There is not much of an aftertaste. It is not as subtle or balanced as the Bokma Friesch, but nevertheless is easy to like. Adding water reduced the citrus and made the drink a bit drier. The water also drew out a background note I did not especially care for – something like ammonia. This had been faintly present before, but the water made it obvious. For me this taste became an unpleasant distraction.

Overall Impression: This could be drunk by itself or used in a cocktail. It is robust enough for mixing and I like its heavy citrus character. However, I prefer the Bokma Freische for its better balance, and because it is free of that ‘ammonia’ taste. This one gets points for the crooked bottle design though. It is kind of cool.

Bols Genever Zeer Oude (35% alc/vol)

Nose: This has a rich aroma that is far more sweet than spicy. You can smell a rich layer of grains, laid on top of which are some spicier notes, primarily juniper.

Taste: A big rich flavor. There is a creamy mouth-feel with tons of malt, with some gentle juniper flavors making things interesting. Citrus does not make its presence felt in a big way. Adding water did little to change the intensity of flavor or the mouth-feel. The water brought out some new tastes though, revealing a hint of the ‘musky’ taste I had noticed in the Boka Friesche. There is gently bitter aftertaste, almost like gentian or something. It is very smooth with no unwelcome flavors or unpleasantness.

Overall Impression: This is great for sipping, and would make an ideal basis for traditional Genever cocktails like the Fancy Gin Cockail. Of the four spirits I have sampled, this would be the best starting point for somebody wanting to understand Genever. All the characteristics are present.

Some Concluding Thoughts

To round things up I want to say that the Oude style is really what Genever is about. If shopping for Genever you should try and start there. If you are lucky enough to find some korenwijn grab that too. The Jonge is nice, but has only some of the character of the Genever once popular in cocktails. Using the Jonge in traditional Genever cocktails is going to be like cutting the rye in your Manhattans 50/50 with vodka. You may get the idea of the drink but you will not get the real experience. Of course, since the Jonge is by far the most popular and easy to find style, you will probably end up experimenting with it anyway. Nothing wrong with that and it is still fun to play with.

In a future post I will look at some Genever cocktails.

* Thanks to Jared Brown of the Exposition Universelle des Vins et Spiritueux for straightening out this confusion.

Ernest Hemingway, endurance drinker, greets Fidel Castro, endurance orator

Auckland is suffering in the grip of a pressing lime shortage. Unrest has been quelled so far through the imposition of martial law (Batista will be smiling in his grave), but nobody knows how long the authorities can maintain even this crude semblance of order. OK, I may be exaggerating slightly. Everything is surprisingly normal considering that there have been no limes in the supermarkets since before Christmas. This means I can’t enjoy a Daiquiri despite the summery weather. The good thing though is that I’ve been meaning to write about the Daiquiri for a while, so with Daiquiris on my mind but none to be had I may as well get writing.

The Daiquiri ranks somewhere among my favorite cocktails. It competes for a top three spot with the likes of the Old Fashioned, the Sazerac and the Manhattan. Simply by virtue of being a rum drink while the others are whiskey the Daiquiri would have to get in the top three somehow or other. It definitely takes the top spot for tropical drinks. It also gets extra points for not requiring any special ingredients. A Daiquiri simply involves mixing some very ordinary ingredients with a little skill. Unlike say, a Sazarac (good luck finding real rye and Peychauld’s Bitters in most bars), any bar can make a decent Daiquiri if they care to.

Given my weakness for Daiquiris then I was always going to have something to say about the drink sooner or later. The Daiquiri is also an interesting drink to look at in a little detail simply because there is so much more room for interpretation than with most drinks. However, while there are some truly excellent variations on the classic Daiquiri, your typical Daiquiri variation is an overly sweetened, garishly colored, artificially flavored abomination. I’m going to take a look at the origins of the Daiquiri, its basic forms, and some traditional variations on that basic form.

Hemingway and Errol Flynn chat over a Daiquiri. The scene is the El Floridita bar, Havana, during the Cuban Revolution of 1959. Flynn would die later that year of a heart attack.

So what is a Daiquiri exactly?

The story goes that the Daiquiri was invented in Cuba in or around 1898, in the town of Daiquiri, by an American mine supervisor named Jennings Cox. This would seem to make the drink a product of the U.S. colonization of Cuba that followed Spain’s defeat in the Spanish-American war in 1898. Daiquiri itself was an area of U.S. influence, with U.S. forces, including Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, making it their disembarkation point in Cuba.

There are a couple of versions of the tale. One version goes that Mr. Cox was a habitual gin drinker (some even say he was a Martini drinker) who discovered his stockpile of gin was running low just as a party of distinguished American visitors were due to arrive. Thinking quickly, he invented a rum cocktail to serve in place of gin, coming up with a mixture of rum, lime-juice and sugar. The other version of the story says that Cox developed the concoction for his employees in response to a malaria scare. Neither version of the story sounds plausible to me.

U.S. forces disembark at Daiquiri during the Spanish-American war

The Martini detail sometimes found in the first version of the story seems very dubious. First, the basic idea of the Daiquiri (rum, lime and sugar) predates the Martini by centuries, and so framing the invention of the Daiquiri as a quest for a Martini substitute is practically an insult to the Daiquiri. Second, the first literary reference to the Martini does not occur until 1910 – in the Jack London novel “Burning Daylight”. It seems difficult to believe that over a decade before the Martini made it into a work of popular fiction, the Caribbean was playing host to habitual Martini drinkers from America who needed to be placated with a ‘special invention’ when a Martini was unexpectedly unavailable. Third, the idea that Americans traveling the Caribbean at that time would have been unaccustomed to rum and a new drink was required to coax them into drinking the stuff seems odd. Rum was the drink of choice back in the early days of the United States, and remained the quintessential maritime drink at a time when all Caribbean travel was by sea. Could Americans traveling the Caribbean at that time really have not expected to drink rum? Fourth, the story displays a U.S.-centric conceit in the notion that it took an American to think of combining rum, lime and sugar. Navies had been serving up rum and lime for literally hundreds of years by the late 19^th Century, and were surely only imitating others before them. The combination of rum, citrus and sugar must have been so obvious and ubiquitous by the late 19^th century that only the most unadventurous rum drinkers could have overlooked it. What was the combination after all but a rum sour? Even the Brazilian Caipirinha is more or less a Daiquiri served on ice. The Daiquiri is the sort of thing that only an idiot would never have thought of. Realistically, the basic idea must surely have been thought of in numerous places by numerous people.

Not a Daiquiri in sight as the Rough Riders rest after capturing the San Juan heights. The Rough Riders may never have drunk the Daiquiri cocktail, but the association of the drink with the town of Daiquiri, from which they launched their Cuban adventure, may have helped the subsequent popularity of the drink with the U.S. armed forces.

Regardless of whether Jenings Cox invented the Daiquiri though, or even named it, he may have helped get Americans drinking it. In 1909 Cox is said to have served the drink to a visiting naval officer, who then introduced it to the Army and Navy Club in Washington D.C. The drink caught on among the U.S. defense forces, and Army and Navy Club renamed one of its bars the Daiquiri Lounge. Americans visiting Havana during Prohibition thus already had a little exposure to the Daiquiri, and spent their holidays in its enthusiastic appreciation – they certainly hadn’t flown all that way to admire the architecture. Later still, J.F.K. would make the Daiquiri the presidential drink of choice. This presidential stamp of approval drove the Daiquiri to new heights of popularity, popularity that sadly saw it morph into the machine dispensed slush sold in drive-through Daiquiri bars in Louisiana – a concoction you must remember never to ask for at a White House reception.

However it all happened then, the Cuban town of Daiquiri somehow attached its name to the basic rum sour, a straightforward rum, lime and sugar cocktail made as follows.

Basic Daiquiri Recipe:

A nice pour of rum, preferably white, say 2 oz

Juice of 1 lime, say 1 oz

Sugar to taste, say 1 tsp

Shake over ice and strain into a glass.

So the basic Daiquiri is 2 parts rum, 1 part lime, with sugar to taste. Sounds pretty easy, eh? If only. . . To get a good result you should consider the following suggestions:

It is sad that this even needs to be said, but obviously you need to use freshly squeezed lime juice. A lot of bars use bottled or powdered artificial ‘lime juice’, something like a lime flavored sweet-and-sour mix. There is no way of getting a good drink out of this crap so forget about even trying.

An early advertisement for Havana Club rum

Use a white rum. Given the Daiquiri’s Cuban heritage a Cuban white rum is most appropriate. Havana Club Blanco is my favorite. I’d use the Blanco above the slightly aged Tres Anos because the Blanco’s slightly rough around the edges character suits the straightforward and refreshing nature of a Daiquiri. The Tres Anos can be almost too smooth for its own good in a drink like this. Havana Club rum has an strong literary pedigree as a Daiquiri rum, featuring in the Graham Greene novel “Our Man in Havana”. The accidental secret agent Wormold drinks Havana Club Daiquiris at the Havana Club itself, where drinks are given away free to coax tourists into buying overpriced bottles of rum.

Big Constante tends bar while Hemingway drinks at the El Floridita

When squeezing the limes extract only the juice and nothing else. You do not want oils from the skin to get into the drink. This is where the Daiquiri differs from the Caipirinha. In a sense the Daiquiri is a purer drink, free of bitter citrus oils, while the Caipirinha is its rustic cousin in which everything is simply muddled together. Ernest Hemingway was the ultimate Daiquiri drinker, and his Daiquiris were free of citrus oil, so keep the oil out! Hemingway’s regular Daiquiri haunt was the El Floridita bar in Havana, where great pains were taken to keep the drinks free of citrus oil. Constante Ribalaigua Vert (known as Big Constante), who ran the El Floridita when Hemingway was a regular customer, was described by the contemporary cocktail writer David Embury as follows: “His limes were gently squeezed with his fingers lest even a drop of the bitter oil from the peel get into the drink; the drinks were mixed (but not overmixed). . . The stinging cold drink was strained through a fine sieve into the glass so that not one tiny piece of ice remained in it. No smallest detail was overlooked in achieving the flawless perfection of the drink”. If Big Constante took such pains to keep lime oil out of the Daiquiris he served Hemingway, I know how I want my Daiquiris made.

The El Floridita today

On a related point, do not put the spent lime shells in the shaker. A few bars that use freshly squeezed juice wear their commitment to fresh ingredients on their sleeves a bit by letting fresh fruit get into places it shouldn’t. Besides contributing undesirable oils, a spent lime shell in the shaker just represents unnecessary non-frozen material in there, drawing thermal energy from the ice, increasing ice melt, and diluting the drink. A Daiquiri should be an extremely cold and concentrated drink, and adding lime shells to the shaker is inconsistent with achieving this. So put only the juice in the shaker.

Either syrup or sugar work fine as the sweetener but I prefer sugar for a couple of reasons. First, a Daiquiri gets shaken for long enough that dissolving the sugar should not be a problem. Second, the balance between sweet and sour in a Daiquiri is crucial and sugar is slightly easier to measure than syrup. Third, there is a certain aesthetic in the few undissolved grains of sugar that you sometimes discover in the bottom of the glass as you take your final sip. They remind you of the beautiful simplicity of Daiquiri. Some bars play around with the type of sugar used. I wouldn’t go for anything too dark, but slightly unrefined sugars can be nice. Simple syrup is also perfectly OK if you prefer. It does not matter too much either way.

A Daiquiri should be as cold as possible. The texture can vary though, and there are three worthy possibilities. The first texture is fully liquid, and is produced by shaking, then double straining the drink (i.e. straining it out of the shaker and into the glass through a fine sieve). According to David Embury this was Big Constante’s favored preparation. The second texture is liquid with a surface film of ice, and is produced by shaking, then straining from the shaker and directly into the glass (i.e. relying on the shaker alone to strain the drink and not using a fine sieve), allowing a layer of very fine ice chips into the drink. A lot of bars make Daiquiris like this, and although Big Constantine might not have liked it I don’t see anything wrong with it personally. Ice chips are out of place in a Martini but to me they seem at home in a refreshing tropical drink like a Daiquiri. The third texture is frozen, and is produced by briefly blending the drink with shaved ice (or perhaps by shaking with shaved ice and pouring the whole thing into the glass). This last texture is a little controversial, and thus worth discussing in detail.

Hemingway enjoys one of his famous double-sized Daiquiri frappes

Frozen drinks sometimes attract scorn among discerning drinkers. This is hardly surprising given that these days most frozen drinks are luridly colored, ultra-sweet, artificially flavored disasters. Many quality bars either want to distance themselves from the whole ‘Strawberry Daiquiri’ image, or do not want to deal with the hassle of a blender, and so choose not to serve frozen drinks at all. Other reasonable bars are so in love with their blenders that they blend all kinds of things that should never be blended – like the Hotel Le Royal in Phnom Penh, where I had a blended Singapore Sling. To use an appropriately Cambodian metaphor, the whole area has become a bit of a minefield. However, there is no reason a frozen and blended drink has to be bad. Hemmingway’s Daiquiris were certainly frozen. Checking the above photo of Hemingway drinking a Daiquiri in the El Floridita will reveal his drink is frozen. The fact that the drink has begun to separate clearly indicates this. By this stage the astute might be wondering if the photo is genuine. Would the real Hemingway have let a drink sit long enough to separate? There is an explanation though. Comparing Hemingway’s glass with those of his companions reveals that he is on his famous ‘Papa Dobles’ – a extra large ‘diabetic’ daiquiri for which a recipe is given below. Obviously a larger drink would take longer to consume and thus have more opportunity to separate. The photo has not been tampered with. Graham Greene provides further support for the authenticity of the Daiquiri frappe, with Wormold drinking frozen Daiquiris at the Havana Club: “They had another free daiquiri each, frozen so stiffly that it had to be drunk in tiny drops to avoid a sinus-pain.”  The frozen Daiquiri was clearly being enjoyed during the Daiquiri’s glory days in pre-revolutionary Havana, even if Big Constante also served a shaken and strained version. You will struggle to find a good quality frozen Daiquiri these days, but if you are in a bar that uses fresh lime juice and has a blender you should give one a try.

Hemingway drinks what is clearly a frozen Daiquiri

So the fully liquid, liquid-with-ice-film, and frozen are all respectable textures for a Daiquiri. To achieve good results with any of these the key point is very cold ice. A liquid Daiquiri (strained or unstrained) requires enough very cold ice to completely fill the shaker, then needs to be shaken long and hard enough to make the outside of the shaker completely frost up. The long shake gets the drink as cold as possible, and also generates very fine ice chips if these are desired. A frozen Daiquiri requires enough cold crushed ice to cover the rum and lime, but not enough to deeply bury them. Brief blending should then yield a drink that is frozen, yet still pours easily. Too much ice will make the drink weak and too stiff to drink. The fact that every Daiquiri photographed with Hemingway has begun to separate suggests that they were not frozen very solid, so to be authentic go light on the ice rather than heavy. You can also make a frappe Daiquiri by simply shaking with crushed ice. I sometimes wonder whether the El Floridita might not have made their frozen Daiquiris this way rather than by blending. This gets a similar result to what you would get by using a blender. I guess it is not too big a deal either way.

Castro looks the worse for wear and lags by several drinks as Hemingway tackles yet another massive Daiquiri

Armed with the above knowledge you should be able to make an excellent Daiquiri. The next step is to examine a few variations.

David Embury Daiquiri

2 oz rum

½ oz lime juice

½ tsp sugar

This drink differs slightly from the first recipe in proportions. The first recipe is based on proportions of 4:2:1 (i.e. four parts of rum, two parts of lime juice, and one part of sugar). The David Embury recipe uses 8:2:1 proportions, making a drier and more rum-focused drink. This is the type of Daiquiri I like. Obviously there is room to improvise to suit your taste. The point is that the original 4:2:1 proportions can be adjusted. Different formulas might also work better with different rums.

Daiquiri Variation (Maraschino)

2 oz rum

½ oz lime juice

½ tsp sugar

Dash or two of Maraschino Liqueur

This is my favorite Daiquiri variation. You can get a perfectly made one of these in Constellation (an excellent little cocktail bar in Shanghai). I can’t remember now where I first saw this recipe. I think I found it somewhere labeled as a ‘Hemingway Daiquiri’ or similar, probably through confusion with the Papa Doble which also uses Maraschino. I suggested to Mr. Jin at Constellation that he added a dash of Maraschino to my usual Daiquiri. Ever since then I’ve preferred drinking them this way. In fact it is a pretty intuitive and straightforward variation on a Daiquiri – dozens of old-school cocktails were finished off with a dash of maraschino. The idea is to add complexity through a very subtle Maraschino flavor. The drink should still be about rum, but with a whisper of something else in the background. Although I never actually tried this, I bet a tiny dash of kirsch, or a dry apricot brandy (e.g. Barack Palinka), would make another interesting variation.

Floridita Daiquiri

2 oz rum

1 oz lime juice

¼ oz grapefruit juice

¼ oz maraschino liqueur

½ tsp sugar

This was the house Daiquiri at the El Floridita Bar in Havana. The grapefruit makes a really nice addition, working almost like an alternative to sugar in taking the edge of the lime. This version is excellent frozen.

Papa Doble (Hemingway Daiquiri)

4 oz rum

2 oz lime juice

½ oz grapefruit juice

½ oz maraschino liqueur

This was Hemingway’s usual drink at the El Floridita, and is basically a double sized Floridita Daiquiri without the sugar. Since Hemingway was diabetic he limited his sugar intake, and apparently simultaneously doubled his rum intake to compensate. Hemingway drank them frozen, and the freezing probably helps mellow the acidity a little. Some suggest making the maraschino a float on the final drink. It is worth noting that potent, acidic, minimally sweetened drinks were quite common in the first few decades of the 20^th Century, so a sugar free Daiquiri was not such an odd idea for the time. Obviously you could (perhaps should) either cut this one in half or share it between two.

Floridita Daiquiri (Vermouth Version)

1 ½ oz rum

½ oz lime juice

½ oz Italian vermouth

1/8 oz creme de cacao

1/8 oz grenadine

This is an intriguing variation whose origins I know nothing about. It is full of complex and hard to define flavors though and really needs to be tried. The vermouth alone provides nearly enough sweetness to balance the lime, so you don’t need to go heavy on the creme de cacao and grenadine. Pour them as light as you dare, to leave just a hint of chocolate in the aftertaste.

‘Floridita’ Daiquiri (Cointreau Version)

2 oz rum

½ oz lime juice

¼-½ oz Cointreau

This version really may be popular in Cuba these days since it was the drink I was given the one time a Cuban bartender made me a Daiquiri – admittedly this was in Shanghai so the guy may never have tended bar in his home country. Anyway, I asked if he could make an ‘original-style’ unblended Daiquiri (at the time I was still suffering from blender prejudice). He said “Ah! Floridita Daiquiri!”, and made the above. He made it on the sweet side. I would have preferred it a little drier but I had to go off and meet someone so left without having a second round. The Cuban barman was gone when I next visited so that drink was my one and only experience of a real Cuban Daiquiri. A simple and pleasant variation of the original.

Hotel Nacional Special Daiquiri

2 oz rum (recipe specifies golden so maybe go for the Havana Club Tres Anos)

1 ½ oz unsweetened pineapple juice (just get a pineapple and juice it – it’s not hard)

½ oz lime juice

1 tsp dry apricot brandy (i.e. Barack Palinka or similar)

Another interesting Daiquiri variation that was the house cocktail of a Havana Hotel. The hotel still exists but I have no idea if they still serve the drink. The recipe comes from the excellent Gumbo Pages. Pineapple juice becomes foamy when shaken, so this one should pour out with a frothy head, almost like a sour made with egg-white. The big splash of pineapple juice should make sugar unnecessary. The apricot brandy gives it a delicious fruity touch. It makes for a very light and refreshing drink. I don’t advise trying to make this with a sweet apricot brandy. It just won’t be the same.

I could go on and give more recipes but I am going to end it here. Those are all the classic and original Daiquiri recipes that I can think of. I have not given recipes for any frozen fruit Daiquiris, probably because they do not seem like classical Daiquiris to me. If you want to make one just muddle a little fruit in the mixing glass as your the step (aim for an ounce or so of fruit pulp), then proceed to make a Daiquiri normally from there. It’s as simple as that. With certain fruits you may end up with pits and other material, in which case you may be best to make a fruit pure and then strain that into the mixing glass. Adding a little fresh fruit to a basic Daiquiri recipe in this manner will make a pleasant drink that is lower in alcohol and more refreshing than the standard Daiquiri, similar to the Hotel Nacional Special above. The result should be a far superior fruit Daiquiri to anything made from pre-mixes or cheap fruit liqueurs.

Gum syrup is simple syrup with the addition of gum arabic (or gum acacia), an edible gum produced from the acacia tree. Gum arabic alters viscosity in liquids and can act as a stabilizer. The special textural properties of gum arabic meant that historically had quite a range of uses, from photography and printing through to food manufacturing. While gum arabic has been superseded in many applications by cheaper alternatives, it is still used in confectionary and soft drinks. Therefore, while gum arabic can be hard to track down, the best place to find it is in a specialist baking supplies store.

Added to simple syrup, gum arabic does several things: first, it prevents the syrup from crystallizing (a problem as syrups become more concentrated); second, it alters the consistency of the syrup and imparts an interesting ‘silky’ texture; third, it provides a very subtle ‘warm’ aroma. Some may disagree with this last point, but I think there is something there.

The production of gum syrup by adding gum arabic to simple syrup may originally have simply been a means of preventing crystallization. However, the textural properties were surely also appreciated.

Making your own gum syrup is extremely straightforward. You need to bear in mind though that gum arabic has a reputation as an inconsistent substance in terms of its chemical properties. Gum arabic from different sources may vary, so treat the following as a guide for experimentation. Don’t be nervous though. There is no room for real error. So long as your gum syrup contains gum arabic it will have some degree of the properties of gum arabic. It will merely be a matter of how noticeable those properties are, which will depend on the nature of your gum arabic and how much you add. Play around until you get a result you like.

I’ve been making my gum syrup as follows:

Take ½ oz of gum arabic and place in a bowl. Add 1 oz of hot water, stir together, and leave to stand for a while until ‘dissolved’. The gum arabic will gradually soak up the water and turn into a kind of a sticky paste. Some recommend leaving overnight but I think a few hours is long enough.

For the next step make a 3:1 simple syrup in a saucepan, using 6 oz sugar and 2 oz water. Heat while stirring until dissolved, bring to the boil, add the gum arabic mixture, bring to the boil again, use a spoon to remove the scum that will have appeared on the surface, cool (placing saucepan bottom in a sink of cold water will speed up this step if you are in a hurry), strain through cheesecloth or a sieve, and bottle.

Stored in the fridge or freezer it should keep for a long time. The high concentration of sugar means it shouldn’t freeze solid unless your freezer is particularly cold.

Now that your syrup is ready your only problem is what drink to use it in. The gum syrup texture really shines in drinks that fit the classic 19^th century definition of a ‘cocktail’ (i.e. spirit, sweetener and bitters, diluted with a little ice). You will find that the drink comes across as mellower, but without any loss of flavor. An Old Fashioned makes a good place to start playing around with this stuff, and of course you also need to try a Pisco Punch. A Sazerac may be my favorite gum syrup cocktail though, pretty much to the point where I no longer want a Sazerac made any other way. Since a Sazerac contains no ice the gum syrup texture remains undiluted right through to the final sip, and there is just something about the way the gum syrup works with the robust old-worldly flavors in a Sazerac – especially the anise and lemon oil. I never experimented with gum syrup too much in long drinks (Tom Collinses and suchlike). I think that the more diluted the drink the less you are going to notice the difference from regular syrup. However, gum arabic is supposedly still used in manufacturing coke and other sodas, so perhaps this could be an area to experiment with.

The theme for this month’s Mixology Monday is Repeal Day, and Pre-prohibition drinks are thus in order. Pisco is flavor of the month at my place since I managed to pick up three different brands of the stuff. That makes the Pisco Punch the obvious choice for this month’s drink.

I mentioned Pisco Punch the last time I wrote here. The problem with Pisco Punch, and it is quite a problem, is that the original recipe seems to have been lost. Certain things about the drink are known with certainty though.

Pisco Punch was invented at the Bank Exchange on the corner of Montgomery and Washington streets in San Francisco. The Bank Exchange was a meeting place for the San Francisco business community and one of the city’s preeminent watering holes for much of the period between its opening in 1854 and its closure on the arrival of Prohibition in 1919. The drink appears to have been invented by the original owners of the Bank Exchange and the recipe was passed on to Duncan Nicol who ran the establishment from the late 1870s until its closure.

For some reason Pisco Punch attracted exaggerated praise among imbibers. Rudyard Kipling wrote in 1889 that the famous punch was: “compounded of the shavings of cherubs’ wings, the glory of a tropical dawn, the red clouds of sunset, and the fragments of lost epics by dead masters”. Another commentator stated more ominously that it would “make a gnat fight an elephant”. The drink was clearly tasty, potent, well-marketed or some combination thereof.

The recipe was a closely guarded secret and seems to have been lost following the death of Nicol. The result is that various different recipes now claim to be the original. All of these recipes share in common the use of pisco and fresh pineapple chunks marinated in syrup. Almost all also call for lemon or lime juice, though at least one uses grape juice in place of citrus and cuts the pineapple juice down to a mere teaspoon. One or two recipes include a dash of absinthe. Some variations call for a spicy element, either from marinating cloves together with the pineapple or though a dash of Angostura Bitters – this last being a variation that may result from confusion with the Pisco Sour. The controversy surrounding the recipe suggests that there may have been some ‘secret ingredient’ that foiled attempts replicate the taste of the original. However, given that Nicol guarded the recipe so closely he might easily have fed rumors of a ‘secret ingredient’, even if none existed, simply to throw imitators off the scent. It seems difficult to know the truth of the matter, but the idea of a ‘secret ingredient’ is certainly attractive.

An article on a blog by Knox Bronson claims that the ‘secret ingredient’ was gum syrup (see The Secrets of Pisco Punch Revealed). I am not sure about this theory. Gum syrup (sugar syrup with the addition of Gum Arabic to prevent crystallization and give a silky texture) was a standard 19^th century sweetener. Modern drinkers might be struck by a unique texture when the punch is prepared with gum syrup rather than standard syrup, but for drinkers in 19th Century San Francisco gum syrup would have been nothing unusual. Having said that though, punch recipes in Jerry Thomas’ 19^th Century bar guide exclusively call for loaf sugar as a sweetener, with gum syrup mostly restricted to use in cocktails. Jerry Thomas does give one punch recipe that uses gelatin to provide a silky texture, an effect that could also have been achieved with gum syrup. A gum syrup sweetened punch therefore might have been an unusual punch variation. It seems less plausible though that it was a ‘secret’ innovation. After all, owing to its easy mixability compared to sugar, gum syrup would likely have been a common substitution for sugar among bartenders mixing single serving punches in a hurry. Concluding that gum syrup was the ‘secret ingredient’ in the pisco punch seems premature.

Bronson also argues that, despite rumors at the time that the recipe included absinthe, this could not have been the case because the absinthe would have dominated the flavor and been easily discernable. I’m not so sure. The use of very small quantities of absinthe (i.e. dashes) was fairly common in other drinks of the time and hence the use of absinthe would not necessarily have implied an absinthe dominated drink. A punch containing absinthe may have been unusual though. Jerry Thomas lists various absinthe drinks, but not a single example of absinthe in a punch. The apparent lack of other absinthe punches, combined with the absinthe rumors associated with the Pisco Punch, thus could be interpreted as evidence that absinthe was the ‘secret ingredient’.

Regarding the possibility of the secret ingredient being some spicy element, Jerry Thomas gives an interesting recipe for a California Milk Punch that contains pineapple, lemons, sugar, cloves, coriander, cinnamon, brandy (unspecified but possibly in California this meant Pisco?), rum, Batavia Arrack, green tea and milk. Jerry Thomas contains several punch recipes that call for pineapple, but only the Californian version combines the pineapple with spices. This could simply be coincidence, but possibly there is a connection between this Californian spiced pineapple punch recipe and the Pisco Punch?

Personally I suspect that much of the novelty of the Pisco Punch may have lain in the use of pineapple. Pineapple is an interesting fruit from a social history perspective. Originally from Brazil, Europeans first encountered pineapple in the Caribbean at the close of the 15th century. The extraordinary natural sweetness of the pineapple (sugar was a luxury item at the time), its exotic appearance, and the difficulty of transporting the ripe fruit (which only deteriorate after harvesting) initially cemented the position of the pineapple as the fruit of the elite. European ships would load pineapples in the Americas, then make the long return voyage to Europe and present what few fruit remained unspoiled to the local monarch. From such lofty beginnings the pineapple could only really see its status decline, but it managed to retain its exotic and aristocratic associations into the 20th century.

In the 18th and early 19th centuries European aristocrats invested huge sums in hot houses and expert gardeners solely for the purpose of growing pineapples with which to impress dinner guests. Such a luxury were these hot house pineapples that often they were not even consumed, instead being presented as ornamental centerpieces during desert. Guests would recount both the number of pineapples presented and the number actually eaten, perhaps saying that a particular banquet had included “six pineapples, two cut”. The American gentry in the early years of the United States followed this English fashion for growing pineapples in hot houses.

The arrival of steam ships and rail in the 19th century reduced transportation times sufficiently that the hothouse cultivated variety became uneconomical compared to imports. The middle classes and even the poor could suddenly afford occasional pineapples. It ceased being de riguer to serve pineapple only by ceremonially cutting a whole fruit, and pineapple ices, pies, fritters, punches, and other recipes began to appear. Pineapple retained their exotic associations though, and in big cities greengrocers would rent out particularly handsome pineapples as decorative centerpieces for dinner parties. One London socialite joked that no dinner party was complete unless the table was graced by Lady Curzon and a pineapple. Pineapple had become a commodity rather than a true rarity.

Pineapple lost its aristocratic exclusivity by the late 19th century, but nevertheless would have remained a novelty throughout most areas of the United States.  The fruit only became truly ubiquitous after commercial farming and canning operations got underway in Hawaii in the early 20^th Century. Thus the use of pineapple, plus the pisco (unfamiliar to most drinkers outside of California), would already have made the Pisco Punch unusual and worthy of comment among drinkers. Just possibly a dash of absinthe, spice, or even Batavia Arrack added the finishing touch.

Maybe though the original recipe really has been found again? A certain Peruvian San Franciscoite named Guillermo Torro-Lira has recently released a book on the subject entitled “Wings of Cherubs: The Saga of the Rediscovery of Pisco Punch, Old San Francisco’s Mystery Drink”. I have not read this book since I only just saw it online while Googling around for different Pisco Punch recipes. Still, the book may shed some light on what mystery ingredients, if any, were contained in the original Pisco Punch. Has anyone in the US had a chance to check it out?

I made my picso punch as follows (recipe scaled down to single serving size):

2 oz pisco

¾ oz lemon juice (or experiment with lime?)

½ oz pineapple flavored gum syrup* (perhaps with spices?)

Perhaps add a dash of absinthe or absinthe substitute?

Place a chunk or two of marinated pineapple* in a glass. Gently muddle if you feel like it. Stir pisco, lemon juice, gum syrup and (if desired) absinthe over ice and strain into the prepared glass. Recipes for the scaled up punch generally include an ounce or so of water per serving so give it a good long stir over the ice to allow plenty of dilution.

I have also tried adding various other herbal flavorings, such as Chartreuse (green and yellow) and Peychauds Bitters. Chartreuse has an affinity with pineapple, and Peychauds Bitters has anise notes not unlike pastis. It might not be very authentic but there is room to experiment with something along these lines. Still, absinthe/pastis probably works as well as anything.

* Make pineapple marinade by chopping up a fresh pineapple into chunks, covering in gum syrup (sugar syrup with the addition of gum Arabic), and leaving overnight. Both the fruit and syrup are later used in the punch. You could try adding spices to the marinade, perhaps cloves, cinnamon and coriander as in the California Milk Punch. If you added spices it would make sense to gently warm them in the syrup before adding the fruit to allow better infusion of flavors.

I should have lots of ideas for this one since gin has become a favorite spirit of mine. I’ve had dreadful arguments about the whole vodka versus gin thing with friends who believe the former is the most versatile cocktail ingredient. I think gin deserves that honor. Sitting here writing this though, I can’t say that I have any particular drink in mind for this Mixology Monday. However, there is one thing that I believe does need to be said.

Gin occupies a unique space in the world of mixed drinks.

Compare gin with whiskey. Much as I like whiskey, and whiskey may even be my favorite cocktail base, gin somehow occupies a superior status as a cocktail ingredient. After all if you feel like whiskey you don’t really need to be drinking a cocktail at all. You can just dispense with all the bother of ice, bitters, sugar, bar spoons, shakers, maybe even the glass. And however good a drink you mix with whiskey, somebody is always going to say that they prefer to drink their whiskey straight, and their preference for purity in this matter is unassailable. If you stuck to your guns and maintained whiskey was better mixed, then in no time at all you would find yourself the losing party in a heated debate with a group of wizened old guys that had spent their lives making whiskey, and whose granddaddies spent their lives making whiskey before them. You would finish up ashamed that you had ever thought to challenge their superior wisdom in the matter.

Rum is another case. Rum cocktails are all very well, but if a pirate suddenly walked in as you were drinking a Daiquiri the chances are you’d blushingly mutter some excuse about warding off scurvy, finish your Daiquiri, and loudly demand a tumbler of straight rum – over-poof naturally. . . Nobody wants to risk losing a limb because a drunken pirate takes umbrage at them holding an umbrella drink, and while a Daiquiri isn’t exactly an umbrella drink you can’t expect a pirate to be sober enough to realize that.

Every rum drinker secretly wants to be a pirate, and everybody knows that pirates drink their rum straight. If pirates want to get fancy they might add gunpowder to their rum and set it alight. However, while hugely entertaining this practice does not make for a tasty drink. Unfortunately the truly serious drinker has to forget about mixing rum except for medical reasons.  Fortunately many of us enjoy rather delicate constitutions.

Gin is very different. Gin demands to be mixed. I never heard of anybody secretly fantasizing about being an unconscious body in some 18^th century London gin shop. There is nothing romantic about straight gin. Unmixed gin smacks of desperation. Though some would say straight gin has a certain old-world charm, the same could be said of chimney sweeps and press gangs. Basically, enjoying the full potential of gin is probably going to require mixing it. Once you realize this fact and gather together the paraphernalia to facilitate some creative mixing (ice, shakers, barspoons, bitters, liqueurs, glassware etc.) then you have the beginnings of something very civilized indeed. I believe I remember reading a book arguing that human civilization began with gin. Humans had previously lived as hunter gatherers, but distilling and enjoying gin required them to settle down, cultivate juniper berries, forge steel for shakers, blow glass, develop an alphabet for writing cocktail manuals, etc. It was a fascinating book, and I would be able to give a more detailed account of it all if I hadn’t been drinking rather a lot of gin when I read it.

So gin is the ultimate cocktail ingredient. The aromatics in gin mean that it contributes an extra dimension to a drink even when used in fairly small quantities, but at the same time gin is light enough that is doesn’t necessarily overpower other ingredients. Looking through older cocktail manuals probably reveals more interesting recipes with gin than with just about anything else. Gin makes an especially good foil to liqueurs. Gin’s dry nature allows it to work together with liqueurs while minimizing the sweetness of the final drink. This doesn’t apply to the same extent with vodka.

Gin has been enjoying something of a revival recently. One aspect of this phenomenon has been the emergence of lots of premium gins. Being in New Zealand right now and China before that I haven’t had the opportunity to try many of these new gins. However, I have tried Hendricks and Tanqueray 10. Am I impressed? I’m not entirely sure. I wonder whether these new premium gins are not evolving to be less ‘gin-like’ than traditional gins?

One of the distinguishing characteristics of these premium gins seems to be that they taste smooth and appealing even when drunk straight. Some months back I tried an experiment in a bar here in Auckland where I drank two Martinis alongside each other, one made with standard Tanqueray and one made with Tanqueray 10. Despite me specifically asking for a 1/3 vermouth to 2/3 gin ratio the bartender didn’t add anything like that much vermouth, going down the old rinse the ice route instead. The Tanqueray 10 was the better drink, but was the test a fair one? If gin really is best mixed, then shouldn’t mixing involve more than adding a dribble of this or that?

A gin drink I’ve been enjoying recently the Barbara West Cocktail. This drink comes from Ted Haigh’s “Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails”. I usually make it with Plymouth Gin, my general purpose gin of choice these days. Recipe below:

2 oz gin

1 oz sherry (something reasonably sweet like a cream sherry – not a fino)

½ oz lemon juice

scant dash of bitters

Shake over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

For a gin drink this one is rather winey and meditative. I often think gin drinks need to be very cold, but this is one that doesn’t suffer as it warms up; in fact it actually gets some new and interesting dimensions.

I have also experimented by substituting pisco for the gin. I thought pisco would work nicely with sherry since both are kind of grapey and aromatic. The pisco version is by no means bad, but without further tweaking I think it is a little one-dimensional compared to the gin version. More evidence of the superiority of gin!

Last night I dropped into Trader Vic’s recently opened Shanghai restaurant for a Shanghai Expat hosted cocktail party. The service at Trader Vics is five star, the Polynesian decor takes you a world away from the grime and grind of Shanghai, and the food and drinks are not half bad. However, you can’t help thinking the cocktails could be better. The drinks are by no means bad, but it is depressing to patronize the joint that invented the Mai Tai only to find the great drink a mere shadow of what it could be.

Unlike most places, Trader Vic’s make Mai Tais more or less to the original Victor Bergaron recipe. That is, they don’t add any fruit juices other than lime, the juice is freshly squeezed, orgeat is used rather than almond liqueur, no strange liqueurs like apricot brandy go in the mix, and the drink is a solid rum punch rather than a diluted fruit punch with no rum taste. In short, they make a pretty good Mai Tai. Sadly they don’t use good rum.

The other disappointing thing is that Trader Vics do not use what I would consider a good quality mint*. The mint they use is the mild and herbaceous mint with soft leaves common around Shanghai. This mint doesn’t do a lot to the taste of a drink, or anything else for that matter. More intense mint with stiffer leaves is sometimes available in Shanghai, just a littler harder to find. I think the stuff with stiffer leaves is peppermint, and maybe that is not the ideal mint to use. In any case it seems better to me than mint with no real flavor.

The Mai Tai was originally concocted with Wray Nephew 17 year old Jamaican rum. As his chain of restaurants expanded and stocks of the Wray Nephew 17 year old became depleted and increasingly expensive, Victor Bergaron began using lesser rums. In particular he began mixing lesser Jamaican rums with the very dry Martinique rums to obtain a similar complexity to the original Wray Nephew product. Unfortunately, these days Trader Vic’s uses standard Meyers rum plus a house ‘Mai Tai mix’. The Mai Tai mix probably contains a little aged rum, but the end result is underwhelming.

Anyway, after the Trader Vic’s experience last night I thought I’d try making my own Mai Tai. Since aged Jamaican is unavailable in Shanghai I used a mixture of aged Cuban rum and Martinique rum. I found Marie Brizard Orange Triple Sec the other day, so that was another reason for trying the drink again. Previously I’ve only been able to find cheap Bols triple sec or Cointreau. Cointreau is nice, but the taste and alcohol content may be a little intense to make it a perfect orange triple sec substitute.

My Mai Tai

1 oz Havana Club 7 Anos

1 oz St. James Amber

1 oz fresh squeezed lime juice

1/2 oz Marie Brizard Orange Curacao

1/4 oz Monin Orgeat (Monin is quite intense so I reduced slightly from the 1/2 oz recommended in a lot of recipes)

1/4 oz simple sugar syrup

Shake over crushed ice and serve in a double rocks glass, putting one of the spent lime shells in the drink. Garnish with some nice quality mint if you have it. I didn’t have mint handy so used a pineapple spear with a maraschino cherry.

The version makes a nice drink. The rum taste could be stronger, but the complexity is there. The nutty flavors of the Martinique rum go well with the orgeat. In the absence of a decent Jamaican rum well aged Havana Club works OK. The citrus flavors seem far more of a background note using the Marie Brizard Curacao compared to Cointreau. I could be wrong though since it has been at least six months since I made this with Cointreau. If the drink has any weakness it could be that the Orgeat comes through a bit strong. Perhaps some more adjusting is in order, or perhaps real Jamaican rum would fix this.

* I have revised my opinions on this mint question. At the time of writing I think I had the idea that any drink containing mint should be as minty as possible, with peppermint offering a promising direction. Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, how absolutely disgusting! I can’t remember exactly what the Trader Vic’s mint was like, but I’m sure it was fine. For pretty much any cocktail, something closer to spearmint is going to be much better than peppermint. Maybe the Stinger could be an exception – were one to add a mint garnish?

Again Kumuhana looked carefully about him, and up into the monkey- pod boughs as if to apprehend a lurking listener. His lips were very dry. With his tongue he moistened them repeatedly. Twice he essayed to speak, but was inarticulately husky. And finally, with bowed head, he whispered, so low and solemnly that Hardman Pool bent his own head to hear: “No.”

Pool clapped his hands, and the little maid ran out of the house to him in tremulous, fluttery haste.

“Bring a milk and gin for old Kumuhana, here,” Pool commanded; and, to Kumuhana: “Now tell me the whole story.”

“Wait,” was the answer. “Wait till the little wahine has come and gone.”

And when the maid was gone, and the gin and milk had travelled the way predestined of gin and milk when mixed together, Hardman Pool waited without further urge for the story. Kumuhana pressed his hand to his chest and coughed hollowly at intervals, bidding for encouragement; but in the end, of himself, spoke out. . .

Milk is not the first thing you associate with gin, and gin and milk is not the first thing you associate with Waikiki. Gin and milk was a popular concoction in the 19^th Century though, and Jack London made it Hardman Pool’s drink of choice in his Hawaiian short story The Bones of Kahekili (1919). I think I also remember hearing somewhere that the Queen Mother used to drink gin and milk. To observe that gin and milk is no longer popular as it was would be an understatement, but with endorsements from Jack London and the Queen Mum perhaps everyone owes it to themselves to give it a try?

I made a passing mention of warm gin in last month’s post on the Sleigh Flip (a flip involving hot beer, rum and egg). In that post I suggested that warm gin sounded like a very bad idea. After writing that though I started thinking warm gin might just be worth a try. Gin and milk seemed a good combination for a warm gin drink, and also had the interest factor being something I had heard about but never tried.

I am sure that gin and milk would taste fine on the rocks, and the drink probably was often drunk that way. However, I doubt Hardman Pool’s gin and milk included ice. The Bones of Kahekili is set on a Hawaiian cattle ranch in the year 1880, a place and time when ice may not necessarily have been available. I am guessing that Hardman Pool’s gin and milk was simply mixed at room temperature. Here in Shanghai though it is freezing right now, and moreover this month’s Mixology Monday is looking at winter warmers, so warm gin and milk seems just the thing. Back when gin and milk was popular I expect it was served warm in winter. Before the introduction of electric refrigeration it would have been much easier to warm drinks in winter than to cool them in summer.

To make a basic gin and milk is very simple. Pour a measure of gin into a glass and top up with three or four measures of milk. Full fat milk is best for this drink. Sweeten with sugar if you want. You can adjust the proportions according to taste.

I decided to adjust the recipe a little, as follows:

1 oz gin (ideally use an Oude style Genever – read more here and here)

4 oz hot milk (ideally full fat)

1 teaspoon orgeat

1-2 dashes Angostura Bitters

Mix ingredients together in a glass. For a truly hot drink microwave for a few seconds after mixing. Send the way predestined of gin and milk when mixed together.

Hot gin and milk tastes much better than it sounds. Hot gin is sharper, less warming, and less rich tasting than rum, whiskey or brandy – the popular spirits used in toddies and other warm drinks. Less cloying than more traditional hot drink ingredients, gin makes an interesting change. Mixing hot gin with milk makes the sharpness manageable and results in a pleasantly approachable concoction. The orgeat adds a type of sweetness that complements both the milk and the gin. Leaving the bitters out would not hurt too much, but they give a little extra depth.

Hot gin and milk makes a pleasant winter drink. It is warming, nourishing, totally unfashionable, and even comes with a story attached!

“I have talked long, O Kanaka Oolea. There is not the enduring moistness in my mouth that was when I was young. It seems that afresh upon me is the thirst that was mine when tormented by the visioned tongue of the harpooner. The gin and milk is very good, O Kanaka Oolea, for a tongue that is like the harpooner’s.”

A shadow of a smile flickered across Pool’s face. He clapped his hands, and the little maid came running.

“Bring one glass of gin and milk for old Kumuhana,” commanded Hardman Pool.