Pineau Experiment No. 6 was perhaps the best of the bunch. . .

The next step was to try mixing some drinks of my own using Pineau des Charentes.

Pineau turned out to slightly awkward stuff to mix with, probably on account of it having such a mild taste. My natural inclination was try substituting pineau in recipes that traditionally call for other aperitif wines (i.e. following well worn patterns like Manhattans and Martinis). This approach did not work well.

While I did not come up with anything truly exceptional, several experiments yielded one or two promising results.

Not following any particular plan, I tried the following.

Experiment #1

2 oz bourbon (Bulleit)

1 oz pineau

½ oz suze

1 tsp lemon added afterwards.

This was not a success. First, there was way too much bourbon. Second, I do not think bourbon and pineau are a good match. A spicier bourbon might be an improvement, but rye would be better still, and definitely in a smaller quantity. Calvados might also be interesting. Again a teaspoon of lemon juice proved an easy way of brightening it up a little. The Suze added a little interest but also did not really fit.

Experiment #2

1 ½ oz pineau

1 ½ oz pisco

½ oz lemon juice

¼ oz Cynar

I figured I would try something using pisco, loosely based on the rhum agricole Pompadour, with the addition of ¼ oz of Cynar to give a bitter and complex finish. While I enjoyed this it did not compare with the Pompadour. The Cynar could be toned down and still do its thing. A teaspoon may be adequate.

Experiment #3

2 oz Pineau des Charentes

1 oz pisco (or calvados)

1 oz fresh pineapple juice

2 dashes peach bitters

Shake over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

On first taste this seemed almost too smooth and refreshing – like one of those vodka cocktails. I was not sure it worked. Despite an interesting list of ingredients it tasted boring. I made it again using Calvados instead of pisco, hoping for a better result. The Calvados version did not really work either.

Experiment #4

1 oz pineau

1 oz Cruzan Estate Light Rum

1 drop (not dash) Angostura

½ tsp Kummel

This was good, making a very smooth rum drink that reminded me a little of the El Presidente on account of its soft profile fringed with herbal flavors. It needs to be reworked, but is a decent start. This one deserves repeating.

Experiment #5

1 oz pineau

1 oz rye (Pikesville)

1 drop angostura

2 drops peychauds

This drink pretty much built on my experiences from Experiment #1. It is tasty enough but perhaps a bit mild and uninteresting. A bigger, spicier rye might have helped it.

Experiment #6

2 oz pineau

1 oz dry apricot brandy (i.e. a eau de vie, not a liqueur)

½ oz lemon juice

1 tsp creme de framboise

Tasty. . . The honey taste in the pineau plays nicely with the apricots. The lemon juice and eau de vie keep things dry. The creme de framboise adds some sugar to round things out, plus an extra layer of fruit flavor that contributes to an overall impression of fruity complexity.

Experiment #7

2 oz pisco

1 oz Pineau des Charentes

Dash of Orange Bitters

This was pleasant but unexciting.

I was probably expecting better results from messing around with Pineau. The first drink I tried with the stuff, the Pompadour, set the bar quite high. None of my own efforts came close.

Still, I think experiments #4 and #6 have potential. Experiment #6 was quite good, and Experiment #4 hints at a whole world of possibilities using pineau with rum and small doses of liqueurs or bitters. In general, Pineau seems to work well in drinks that are light on the spirits. Small touches of liqueurs also work nicely.

I would like to do more experimenting using Pineau and rums. There seems to be lots of potential there. It might also be interesting to mix Pineau with aromatized aperitif wines, something I did not try.

So that is it. While my experiments were not completely successful I think I showed there are promising possibilities for using Pineau in cocktails. Pineau des Charentes might not be as versatile as vermouth but it is still underrated as a cocktail ingredient. Used in the right way Pineau can make good drinks.

It looked better full. . .

Pineau des Charentes is an interesting aperitif from France that I have only recently tried. It seems to be relatively unknown outside of France. Pineau des Charentes is generally drunk straight rather than being used used in cocktails. However, since I am interested in aperitif wines as cocktail ingredients I picked a bottle up to try it out.

Pineau des Charentes (also known simply as pineau) is said to have originated in the 16^th Century when wine must (i.e. unfermented grape juice) was accidentally poured into a cask containing cognac eau de vie. The cognac prevented the must from fermenting and the barrel was set aside as an unfortunate mistake. However, it was found that extended maturation saw the flavors of the wine must and cognac blend to produce a fine drink. Pineau has been a specialty of the Charentes region ever since. The Charentes region seems to be sub-region within Cognac by the way.

The regulations governing production of Pineau des Charentes are quite strict. For a start the product must come from the Charentes region. The grapes used for the must should be Ugni Blanc, Folle Blanche, Colombard, Sémillon, Sauvignon or Montils. Pressing must be light to ensure the pressed juice is of high quality. The cognac used for blending must be a minimum of one year old, 60% or higher alcohol by volume, and from the same vineyard as the must. According to the Comité National du Pineau des Charentes the finished product must be matured in oak barrels for a minimum of 18 months. Other sources mention minimum maturation of 8 months for red pineau and 12 months for white, so there seems to be some ambiguity on this point. Old pineau can be aged for 10 years or longer. The alcoholic strength by volume must be in the range 16-22%. Most pineau is a blend of roughly one quarter cognac to three quarters wine must, with an alcoholic strength of around 17%.

The vast majority of pineau is either consumed within France or exported to Francophone markets. Less than 25% of pineau production is exported, and over 90% of exports go to Belgium and Canada. In practice France and Belgium together consume almost all pineau production. Canada follows a very distant third, but still consumes several times more than the next largest pineau drinking nation. I am guessing Quebec is the center of Canadian pineau consumption. The French are keeping this one very much to themselves. So enough of facts and figures! It is time to open that bottle and see what the French are hiding. . .

The taste is mild but interesting, and unusual compared to other aperitif wines. No herbal flavors, bitterness or spice leap out at you. There is also little of the matured complexity of aperitif wines like port or sherry. This stuff is simply sweet, full bodied, and extremely ‘fresh’. It tastes like a very fruity wine, but also reminds me strongly of mead (honey wine). It is hard to believe it contains no honey since the honey taste is so strong. There is also some apple aroma, though again no apples were harmed in its manufacture. It has an unusual ‘primeval’ character, reminding me of the opening titles in Werner Herzog’s “Fitzcarraldo”, which describe the Amazon is described as a place where God never finished his creation. Yep, it tastes ‘unfinished’, in a good way. Pineau seems slightly rough-and-ready, with a plethora of interesting aromas that threaten to erupt all over the place and are disinclined to sit still. This stuff should have potential as a cocktail ingredient. I wonder why it isn’t used more?

In terms of mixing I would tend to think (roughly in order of potential) along the lines of cognac (the obvious choice), calvados, rhum agricole, pisco, Cuban rum, and whiskey. Pineapple juice also springs to mind, and perhaps Cynar could be another idea. This is not experience talking. I am just making some guesses as to what might work. I should also note that I did not dream up the rhum agricole angle. I bought a bottle of pineau partly so I could make a rhum agricole drink, the Pompadour, from the Esquire Drinks Database. Lets start with the Pompadour then. . .

The Pompadour
1 ½ oz rhum agricole vieux (I used St. James Ambre)

1 ½ oz pineau

½ oz lemon juice

This shows off the characteristics of both the rhum and the pineau. It is weird and unlike anything you are likely to have drunk. It is also fantastic. There is a full on aroma symphony, with the fresh and aromatic characters of both ingredients getting a chance to shine. You should seek out Pineau des Charentes for this drink alone.

Next up are a couple more pineau cocktail recipes I found online. I will include some experimental recipes of my own in a subsequent post. This next recipe is from the website site of a producer of Pineau des Charentes.

Charentais

2 1/2 oz pineau

½ oz cognac

¼ oz créme de framboise

1 tsp lemon juice

This smooth and tasty refresher is just lightly spiked pineau. The source of this recipe was unclear on whether a liqueur or eau de vie framboise was called for (mentioning both in different places). I did not have an appropriate eau de vie so I went for a liqueur. The lemon juice was added by me as an afterthought to give it some zing since it tasted a bit flat.

The next was something not unlike the above, but with the addition of a dash of pineapple juice and the whole then being brought to life with champagne. Again the recipe was from the website of a pineau producer.

Reaulais

2 oz pineau

½ oz cognac

½ oz pineapple juice

1 dash grenadine

2 oz champagne or sparkling wine

Shake everything except the champagne over ice. Strain into a glass and top with champagne.

A very rich yet slightly lively drink. There are no real surprises but it is most pleasant.

The next recipe was from a French language website – hence a little ambiguity over what liqueur is meant.

Ambassade

1 ½ oz pineau

½ oz gin

½ oz “orange liqueur” (I used Grand Marnier)

Stir over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

Another “take Pineau des Charentes and spike it with a little hooch” type of drink. It tastes good though. French style cocktails, by which I mean drinks that are heavy on aperitif wines and light on spirits, are tasty. Made with Grand Marnier the drink is rich and smooth. With Cointreau or some other triple sec it would probably be more fresh and fragrant.

I love the way the French can’t help adding London Dry Gin to things. It has to hurt them, right? Something like an “every time you spike your drink with gin, somewhere in the world a DGSE operative in scuba gear dies” kind of thing.

Sorry, I’m unrelenting about the Rainbow Warrior Affair aren’t I? The French are a fine race, and have punched well above their weight in terms of inventing delicious aperitifs. I’ve had better cocktails than this one, but I’ve also had much worse.

In my next post on Pineau des Charentes I will experiment with some recipes of my own.

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.

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 had the remains of a pineapple in the fridge that needed to be put to use. I didn’t feel like a Singapore Sling or a Park Avenue, the two drinks I normally associate with pineapple juice, so I decided to search online for something with pineapple juice and Cuban rum. The Mary Pickford (and the almost identical Cuban Cocktail Variation) stood out because of their use of maraschino in addition to the juice and rum. Maraschino tends to make drinks interesting and I already knew it went well with Cuban rum in the Hemmingway Daiquiri.

The drink tasted good. The rum sits up front, but the pineapple juice makes it slide down smoothly while the maraschino adds interest. The grenadine lends the drink an attractive pink hue.

The recipe:

1 1/2 oz Cuban rum (I used Havana Club 3 Anos)

1 oz pineapple juice

1/8 oz maraschino

1/8 oz grenadine

Stir over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.