To assist my anticipatory salivation ahead of Anistatia Miller and Jared Brown’s Tales of the Cocktail presentation on “The Cafes of Paris”, I have been taking a look at a few lesser known French aperitifs. Several weeks ago I took a look at Pineau des Charentes. Today I focus on a pair of fruit quinquinas.

Quinquina is vermouth’s neglected cousin. Vermouth is well recognized, if widely feared and misunderstood. Martini drinkers fall into two camps: those who really want vermouth in their drink, and those who merely wish to ritualistically conjure up its spirit. However, while vermouth provokes fierce debate and elaborate juju, the mention of quinquina elicits little more than a blank stare. This is a shame because quinquina is an interesting category. To fix those blank stares, perhaps a little explanation is in order.

Both quinquina and vermouth are aromatized wines (i.e. wines flavored with herbs and spices). Quinquinas distinguish themselves from vermouths in using quinine as a key flavoring. As in tonic water, the quinine originally served a medicinal purpose – warding off malaria and all that. Vermouth and quinquina are not mutually exclusive categories. Some vermouth producers sell ‘quinquina’ versions alongside their regular vermouths: for example Martini & Rossi release their sweet vermouth in both ‘quniquina’ and standard versions. However, despite some overlap there are marked differences, with quinquinas tending to emphasize spice while vermouths are more herbal.

Similar to vermouths, which can be broadly classified into sweet and dry styles, quinquinas largely fall into rouge and blanc styles. The rouge style is rich, spicy and based on red wine – Dubonnet Rouge is the classic example. The blanc style is light, citrus accented, and based on white wine – Lillet Blanc is the iconic product.

For some reason neither of these mainstream styles of quinquina ever challenged vermouth to become a ubiquitous cocktail ingredient. Cocktail recipes never casually call for a generic rouge or blanc quinquina. Quinquina is called for only occasionally, and always by brand. Even luminaries like Charles H. Baker considered Dubonnet to be “only needed in the more elaborate establishments”, and I do not recall him mentioning Lillet at all. Considering that Baker saw orgeat, kummel and six types of bitters as more or less essential bar supplies, this adds up to a bit of a slap in the face for the quinquina category.

If mainstream quinquinas like Dubonnet and Lillet are fairly obscure, fruit flavored quinquina are even more so. These fruity quinquina do not fall within either the rouge or blanc styles, with heavy fruit macerations completely masking the base wine. They deserve a look from cocktailians though, offering a great source of fruit flavors and complexity, yet one with minimal sweetness. Two products are introduced below: RinQuinQuin and Orange Colombo.

RinQuinQuin (15% alcohol by volume) is a peach flavored quinquina. It is produced in Provence by the same firm that makes Henri Bardouin pastis. The name means something like an invigorating drink or a pick-me-up in French. The production process involves maceration, distillation, blending and several months of aging. Both distilled alcohol and wine are infused with quinine, other herbs and spices, and peaches. The peaches are what distinguish the product, and are added not as fruit, but rather as leaves, skins and kernels. This makes for a very complex flavor. The product is lightly sweetened. The result is a fruity but refreshingly dry aperitif wine with a distinctly bitter edge.

Orange Colombo (15% alcohol by volume) is an orange flavored quinquina along the same lines as RinQuinQuin. Based on its complex taste I am guessing it is flavored with more than just orange skins. As in RinQuinQuin, leaves, blossoms or other material may also be used.

These fruit quinquina are traditionally consumed either chilled or over ice, perhaps garnished with a twist of lemon. However, there is no reason they cannot be used in cocktails. Bear in mind that their mild fruitiness makes them poor vermouth substitutes, while their lack of sugar and their herbal complexity prevent them from standing in for fruit liqueurs. A bit of a fresh approach is in order.

Here are a few ideas. . .

Peach Martinez

1 oz Genever (Bols Oude)

1 oz Italian vermouth (Martini Rossi)

1 oz RinQuinQuin

2 dashes Fees Whiskey Barrel Aged Bitters

1 tsp maraschino

Stir over ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

A nice take on the Martinez. Cutting the vermouth with RinQuinQuin makes for a lighter and more interesting drink. The Genever provides a mellow but solid base, neither fading into obscurity nor dominating. The complex peach notes mingle nicely with the cherry. Increase the Genever a little if you find it lacks kick.

When playing around with RinQuinQuin to create variations on existing recipes you will probably find that cutting vermouth half-and-half with RinQuinQuin works better than a straight substitution. RinQuinQuin is more of a one note product than vermouth, albeit a complex note.

RinQuinQuin Vesper

3 oz gin (Tanqueray)

1 oz vodka (Stolichnaya)

¼ oz Lillet Blanc

¼ oz RinQuinQuin

Shake over ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass, and garnish with a large lemon twist.

This is just brilliant. By upping the bitterness the RinQuinQuin addresses the problem of Lillet having been reformulated and lightened since the Vesper was originally invented. The RinQuinQuin also adds a peach layer to the citrus in the Lillet.

Orange Colombo can be used to create another nice Vesper variation. Both products can also be used in regular Martinis, where they work especially well with delicate gins like Tanqueray 10 that stand up poorly to vermouth. I would be inclined to split the quinquina 50/50 with vermouth.

Orange Colombo Pisco Sour

2 oz pisco

½ oz Orange Columbo (or cut back to 1/4 oz)

¾ oz lime juice

1/3 oz simple syrup

1 egg white (half an egg white per drink is sufficient if making multiple drinks)

Dash or two of Fees Whiskey Barrel Aged Bitters

Put everything except the bitters in a mixing glass. Shake long and hard over ice until the drink becomes foamy. Double strain into a sour glass. Finish the drink by garnishing the foam with a few drops of bitters – you can use a toothpick to draw a pattern on the foam. A sour glass, champagne flute or wine glass is preferable for this drink. The garnish of bitters on egg-white foam is intended to provide aroma. A sour glass concentrates the aromas, while the smaller surface area means that the foam, and the aromas, last longer.

The Orange Columbo adds both a subtle orange note and a light bite, making a pleasant variation that jazzes up the original. Perhaps I am not using the right pisco, but I find pisco sours tend to be a little too plain and smooth. Orange Columbo livens things up without creating an unseemly ruckus. You can also try a splash of Orange Colombo in a Margarita – obviously you will still need the orange liqueur, but possibly it could be scaled back a notch.

There is tons of potential for using these obscure fruit quinquina in cocktails. If you see a bottle you should grab it and have a play around. Currently these products are underutilized, leaving the field wide open to experimentation.

Improved Gin Cocktail

The Improved Gin Cocktail is probably the best place to start appreciating the flavor of Genever in cocktails. The basic Gin Cocktail is gin, sugar and bitters. Garnish that with a citrus twist and you have a Fancy Gin Cocktail. Splash some liqueur into that and you have yourself an Improved Gin Cocktail. The Improved Gin Cocktail is the best of the bunch taste-wise, though very intense and heavy genevers (I am thinking Korenwijn style products) might be better appreciated in the more minimalist Fancy Gin Cocktail. Forget about the basic Gin Cocktail unless you find yourself with Genever on hand but no citrus.

Recipe:

2 oz Genever (Bols Oude – use an Oude if at all possible)

1 tsp gomme syrup (try and use real gomme syrup – instructions on making it here)

1-2 tsp liqueur (triple sec, curacao, maraschino or absinthe are all traditional choices)

a couple of dashes of bitters (Fees Whiskey Barrel Aged, Peychaud’s and Angostura are all worthy choices)

Build over ice in a rocks glass, or serve it up if you like. Garnish by squeezing the oils from a citrus twist over the drink, then drop the twist in.

There is huge potential for experimentation with the liqueurs and bitters. While not traditional, Drambuie is an interesting choice that brings out the malt character of the gin. Drambuie probably works best in partnership with another liqueur though, perhaps triple sec. Absinthe also works nicely, as do the anise notes of Peychaud’s. The version pictured above contains Drambuie, Peychaud’s Bitters and a little Absinthe Bitters (a sort of concentrated Absinthe made by the people who make Henri Bardouin pastis).

Martinez

The next drink is not strictly speaking a Genever drink. The Martinez was first mixed with Old Tom (a sort of hybrid gin sitting somewhere between Genever and London Dry). However, in the absence of Old Tom, Genever probably makes a more authentic substitute than London dry. The drink is said to be the ancestor of the modern Martini, and the design is something like a sweetened and reversed Martini – with sweet vermouth rather than dry, and more vermouth than spirit.

Recipe:

2 oz Italian vermouth

1 oz Genever (either Oude or Jonge should do)

1 tsp maraschino

1-2 dashes aromatic bitters (the cinnamon accented Fees Brothers Whiskey Barrel Aged is a good choice)

Stir over ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

The recipe looks a bit odd, but the result is a meditative drink, suitable for winter evenings. Nineteenth Century drinkers obviously were not afraid of vermouth.

Gin Daisy

These days a Tom Collins is made with London Dry Gin. However, in the 19^th Century the drink was made with Old Tom or Genever. Making a Genever-based Tom Collins is a simple matter that hardly requires any advice – just change the base spirit and you’re done. However, the Nineteenth Century also saw Genever used in other highball type drinks. The Gin Daisy is an interesting example. There is something almost Tiki-esque about the old fashioned flavorings.

Recipe:

2 oz Genever

2 tsp orgeat (Monin)

2 tsp Maraschino (Maraska)

½ oz lemon juice (juice of ½ a lemon)

Shake over ice, strain into a glass (I used a small old fashioned glass), and top up with soda water. For some reason I went very easy on the soda in this one, not wanting to dilute drink too much.

This is vaguely reminiscent of a Singapore Sling. The maraschino obviously supplies the cherry, while the soft and malty Genever boosts the fruity feel, and the orgeat adds a hint of Tiki. Tasty and very different. I like orgeat in cocktails.

Gin Fix

Drinkers in the UK will no doubt know the Bramble. In fact the Bramble is simply an updated Gin Fix. The original Gin Fix was concocted with Genever as described below.

2 oz Genever (Bols Oude)

¼ oz lemon juice (juice of ¼ lemon)

1 tsp simple syrup (or gomme syrup if available)

1 tsp raspberry syrup

Fill a glass with shaved ice – I substituted crushed ice. Build the drink over ice and stir thoroughly. Top up with more ice and garnish with seasonal berries – raspberries being the obvious choice. Raspberries being out of season meant I had to slum it with strawberries.

The raspberry syrup and Genever combination is most pleasant. The malty notes of the Genever add complexity and depth to a simple drink. It is worth a look if you want a summery take on Genever. The use of crushed ice means you should end up with a pleasantly frosted glass, adding to the summery feel. Obviously there is lots of potential for playing with different syrups, or substituting a berry liqueur as is done in the modern Bramble. You could even muddle some fruit into the drink, which would pretty much give you a Genever Bramble.

Gin and Milk

I posted on this one earlier – link here.  However, back in those days I did not have Genever.  Gin and Milk is MUCH better with an Oude Genever than with London Dry.  The character changes completely.  Rather than an oddball combination it becomes an intuitive one, with the maltiness of the Genever giving something of a ‘malted milk’ effect. There is no doubt that Gin and Milk was first made with Genever, so make the effort and try it the way it was intended to be.

In my original post on this drink I suggested a dash of orgeat.   When using Genever (especially an Oude) I am not so sure this is a good idea.  There is plenty of flavor happening already and little need to round things out with extras.  Of course if you like the orgeat then go ahead.  The bitters are still a nice touch.

Today I came across a creme de violette from Briottet. The Briottet version seems fuller flavored then how I remember the Benoit Serres. The Benoit Serres had a subtle (i.e. diluted) cognac base with a violet overlay, and may have been relatively high proof (25%?). The Briottet seems more like intense violet on a base of lowish proof (18%) neutral alcohol. It has a strong aroma, happily more reminiscent of a flower shop (or maybe potpourri) than a soap factory. On tasting you get a rich, smooth, fairly deep violet taste that lingers on the tongue. The finish is really quite long, and somehow never turns to soap. While I cannot taste anything besides violet, I still would not call the taste one dimensional.

I am hardly a crème de violette expert. I have only ever tasted two brands, and those several years apart. I may completely wrong about this comparison. Both Briottet and Benoit Serres seem to be good products. However, I think Briottet may pack a little more power and be more suited to mixed drinks. Most drinks using creme de violette require only small quantities, so you want to use a reasonably intense product.

After tasting some of the liqueur straight the obvious thing to do was to make an original recipe Aviation.

The Aviation is simply a gin sour sweetened with maraschino and crème de violette. The modern Aviation excludes the crème de violette, partly because it can be hard to obtain and partly because even back in the 1930s the recipe was sometimes printed without this ingredient. Most notably the influential Savoy Cocktail Book printed the recipe sans crème de violette. The Savoy contains many other misprinted recipes so this omission is as likely to have been a mistake as anything else.

Aviation Cocktail

2 oz gin (Plymouth)

½ oz lemon juice (strained – you want this drink as clear as possible)

1/3 oz maraschino liqueur (Maraska)

1/6 oz crème de violette (Briottet)

Shake over ice and double strain into a cocktail glass. If you don’t have crème de violette just use ½ oz maraschino.

You should end up with a potent, refreshing, and aromatic gin drink, colored the faint purple-grey of an overcast sky. Yep, it harks back to the early days of aviation, when planes flew through clouds as often as they flew above them. If it is not sweet enough try slightly increasing the liqueurs. Be careful not to overdo it though; both liqueurs are powerful tastes in their own right and can easily dominate the drink.

The crème de violette version is a definite improvement on the straight maraschino version. There is simply more going on as the violet adds an extra layer of aroma and complements the dry cherry flavors. The subtle purple tinge is also attractive.

The next thing I need to do is find some more drinks that use crème de violette. . .

Update: I also tried the Attention Cocktail from Jamie Boudreau’s site. I did not have a true absinthe handy, so I used Henri Bardoin pastis supplemented with a few drops of L’Extreme d’Absente Bitters. Those bitters are powerful, and using them like this gave a very different taste to using straight pastis. The really interesting thing in this drink is how the creme de violette stands up to the pastis/absinthe. Well worth a try anyway.

* Creme de Violette is hard enough to find that I should probably give the address of the shop, just in case someone else in Auckland reads this and wants to pick some up. The shop is Maison Vauron, located at 5 McColl St., Newmarket. They have a website at www.mvauron.co.nz, and you can phone them on 09 529 0157. Although they are mainly a wine merchant they sell quite a few interesting French aperitif type things – well worth checking out if you are interested in cocktails.

Passion Fruit Rhum

1 ½ oz rhum blanc

pulp of 1 passion fruit (about 1 oz)

juice of ½ a lime

1 ½ tsp golden syrup (substituting for cane syrup)

Put the passion fruit pulp in a highball glass and give a quick muddle to help break down the seeds. Add ½ a lime cut into wedges and muddle some more. Add syrup and stir. Add rhum, then finish with crushed ice.

This is great. The aromatic rhum agricole is an amazing match for the passion fruit. A simple and excellent drink. You have to try one of these. It does no harm to also try this with an aged rhum.

I just dumped the passion fruit pulp into the glass because I was too lazy to wait for the juice to drip through a sieve, and anyway I thought the pulp would look nice.  If you do not like my method you can use the following Caribbean trick.  Place the pulp in a sieve over your glass, press with a spoon to extract as much of the juice as you can, then pour your rum through the remaining pulp.  This way you will really get the last of the juice out.  Of course now some of your rum is sitting in the spent pulp.  Life is all about trade offs.

Given the aromatic nature of passion fruit and rhum agricole, I couldn’t help wondering how they would fare when paired with maraschino, an aromatic liqueur.

Passion Fruit, Rhum and Maraschino Daiquiri

2 oz St. James White

¾ oz passion fruit pulp

½ oz lime juice

½ oz maraschino

Shake hard over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

This was on the thin and sour side, without the passion fruit leaping out to assert itself, but oddly moreish. Again it needs some work, probably including some more sugar, and was not what I expected. However, the whole maraschino, passion fruit, and rhum agricole thing is worth exploring further. These are three highly aromatic and funky ingredients, and their combination makes a very interesting sour. I may come back to this some time.

Passion Fruit Nacional Daiquiri

2 oz Cuban Rum (I used Havana Club Blanco)

1 oz passion fruit juice

½ oz lime juice

1 tsp dry apricot brandy (i.e. eau de vie)

2 tsp gomme syrup (or substitute simple syrup)

Shake over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

I used a generous dose of gomme syrup to add body. Passion fruit can have a thin and grainy mouth feel that is best counteracted.

This is very quaffable but not a stand out. I was hoping for the passion fruit and dry apricot brandy to work a little magic as they had in the Fitzcarraldo, my recent pisco experiment. They partner up nicely, but something seems to be lacking. The drink is still kind of sour and thin. One idea could be to make a 50/50 split between passion fruit and pineapple – pineapple would add more body. Another idea could be to change the rum. There are two possible directions, using the 3 year old Havana Club to give a little more body and sweetness, or using a rhum agricole to increase the dry aromatic element (and simultaneously perhaps up the sugar).

Passion Fruit Pisco Sour

2 oz pisco

¾ oz passion fruit pulp (I used a whole passion fruit, which yielded roughly ¾ oz of pulp – not juice!)

½ oz lime juice

¼ oz simple syrup

1 egg white

Shake long and hard over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

I deliberately didn’t double stain, hoping the passion fruit seeds would end up as an attractive garnish on the bottom of the glass. This didn’t happen. About three seeds made it to where they were supposed to go. This was not quite the effect I was after. Maybe double strain and forget about trying to achieve this effect, or simply garnish with a teaspoon of passion fruit pulp in the bottom of the glass?

It seems best to leave out the Angostura garnish on the foam. I experimented with a drop of Angostura on one corner of the drink, but it seemed to distract too much from the delicate passion fruit aroma. Of course some may like it.

This drink made a beautiful pisco sour variation. The passion fruit and pisco make nice partners, and there is no doubting the passion fruit adds some extra complexity.

Since passion fruit comes from the Amazon, and since Pisco also comes from South America I am labeling my further experiments (involving pisco and agricole rum) ‘Amazonian cocktails’.

Amazonian Cocktail #1

2 oz pisco

¾-1 oz passion fruit pulp (my passion fruit was especially big so it gave me practically an ounce of pulp)

½ oz lime juice

¾ oz St. Germain

1 egg white

Shake hard over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

I had envisaged a drink that improved on the above by adding some subtle complexity in the form of St. Germain. I think the St. Germain ended up distracting too much from the passion fruit though. Maybe ½ oz of St. Germain would be better? This is a pleasant drink, but the passion fruit doesn’t jump out like I want it to. Perhaps it just needs tweaking?

Maybe my best drink came last. . .

Amazonian Cocktail #2 (or The Fitzcarraldo) 

1 ½ oz pisco

¾ oz passion fruit pulp

¾ oz dry apricot brandy (i.e. a eau de vie, not a liqueur)

2 tsp Grand Marnier

1 tsp Grenadine

This is just a reworking of the Dulchin, substituting passion fruit for the lime juice. Though I say it myself, this is pretty damn good. The passion fruit makes a much softer and more approachable drink than the Dulchin, yet one that is no less interesting. The combination of pisco, passion fruit and apricot eau de vie provides tons of aromatic complexity. The pisco is easy to pick, but the apricot and passion fruit mesh into a single exotic flavor. While sweeter made with passion fruit than the original Dulchin, it is not too sweet. It could certainly be reworked (playing around with the Grand Marnier and Grenadine?), but this is close to being a pretty good drink. The color is beautiful too.

So why did I call this the Fitzcarraldo? I have always been fascinated by the city of Manaus, the remote Brazilian Amazon town that was the site of a big rubber boom in the late 19^th and early 20^th century. One of the famous stories of the Manaus boom years concerns the grand opera house that was built there. Legend has it that Enrico Caruso himself was scheduled to perform there but for various reasons never made it. No sooner was the opera house completed than the rubber economy collapsed, and Manaus reverted to a remote jungle backwater marking the furthest boundaries of civilization. Werner Herzog directed a movie, Fitzcarraldo (1982), about the dreamer behind the construction of the Manaus opera house. This last drink seems as good a drink as any to christen the Fitzcarraldo. The drink combines Brazilian passion fruit with Peruvian pisco (this makes sense because Manaus is closer to Peru than to most places in Brazil). Meanwhile, European apricot brandy and Grand Marnier bring some Old World refinement to the remote frontier.

The theme for this month’s Mixology Monday (hosted at Sloshed) is brandy. I’ve been taking a bit of a look at pisco recently (check posts here, here, here, here and especially here), so brace yourselves for some more pisco brandy.

Some weeks back I made a dead simple and intuitive pisco drink, a Pisco Sour sweetened with St. Germain elderflower liqueur.

1 ½ oz pisco

¾ oz lemon juice

¾ oz St. Germain

Shake over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

I am sure a lot of people must have thrown this one together before. The pisco and St. Germain work extremely nicely together. Both come through strongly but neither really dominates. Of course the more robust your pisco the stronger the pisco taste is going to be, so consider upping the St. Germain a little when using a stronger flavored pisco. Not much else to say since this one speaks for itself. If it isn’t sweet enough add a dash of simple syrup or increase the St. Germain.

For a variation you could try adding an egg-white.

Then I made it again but with an a teaspoon of Marie Brizard Tangerine. Also very nice and maybe better than the original.

Then, getting ahead of myself as usual, I started thinking about what I could call the thing. Obviously it needed a Peruvian name. If I was a better Catholic I’m sure I could have thought of some Peruvian saint, and after wittily combining that with the St. Germain it would all have been plain sailing. Unfortunately I’m not well versed in these things. Instead I thought of the Peruvian/Amazonian boa constrictor. What with cocktail glasses and the St. Germain bottle design both being somewhat Art Deco I was naturally led from there to the image of a feather boa. Suddenly it seemed obvious that the world needed a pisco cocktail, feminine yet old school, called the Feather Boa. The Feather Boa probably needed to be pink, but it certainly wasn’t going to taste pink. So the recipe got reworked again, and naturally things started getting out of hand – as they have a habit of doing as soon as a feather boa makes an entrance.

I tried

1 ½ oz pisco

¾ oz lemon juice

¾ oz St. Germain

½ tsp grenadine

1 tsp Tuaca

Why did I add Tuaca? Well I had tried a couple of Pisco cocktails from Cocktaildb.com that combined pisco with Galliano. Somebody obviously believes the pisco-vanilla combination works well. Personally I think the vanilla-heavy Galliano too easily overpowers pisco and the end result is just a bit weird. Tuaca on the other hand has a much milder vanilla flavor, and unlike Galliano it has a grape brandy base and some citrus notes. Intuitively Tuaca should be a much better match for Pisco than Galliano – which is a fine liqueur but a devil to mix with. Therefore I decided to give Tuaca a try in the Feather Boa. The idea was to introduce some vanilla to heighten the sense of sweetness without actually being cloying – the addition of vanilla makes a thing taste sweeter than it really is. Moreover, the use of Tuaca would still add a little citrus just as the Manderine had done. The result is pretty good though the citrus in the Tuaca is too faint to be detectable.

Then I made it again with 1 tsp maraschino instead of the Tuaca. Excellent! Better than the Tuaca. You get just the ghost of a taste of cherry in the mix which really improves things.

Despite having just made a really nice drink I then decided to do something completely different, and thus produced the version I finally settled on. Apologies for being long winded, but I really did go through a range of options.

Having recently done a bit of an exploration of the Daiquiri (check here), including the excellent maraschino and grapefruit version, I decided some grapefruit juice could add complexity and bitterness, and maybe even a touch of pink. I also decided that if I was playing around with introducing a ghostly little flavor in the back of the St. Germain then chocolate would probably work better than almost anything else, and would also go nicely with grapefruit. I probably also had the chocolate and vermouth spiked Floridita Daiquiri in the back of my mind. So I came up with the following, final version.

Feather Boa (another ‘final’ version below)

1 ½ oz pisco

¾ oz lemon juice (lime may be better but I had none available)

½ oz grapefruit juice

¾ oz St. Germain

½ tsp grenadine

½ tsp Tuaca

½ tsp Crème de Cacao

This is seriously nice, and just a little unusual. It probably still needs a little tweaking though. Suggestions anyone? On first taste it seemed well balanced but it seemed to get more and more sour as I went. Maybe the Tuaca could be upped to 1 tsp? I wouldn’t want to increase the Creme de Cacao because it is already quite noticeable.

I like that this drink contains a lot of different fruity flavors, is light without being sweet, and has a little bitterness to make things interesting. It’s a little like a cross between a new style and old style drink. The heavy dose of fruit juice reminds me of contemporary cocktails, while the relatively restrained sweetening reminds me more of older drinks. Anyway, while it may need a little revision I think it has potential.

No photograph of the final (pink) version of the drink. Sorry, it was so tasty it sort of evaporated. I’ll try it again tomorrow.

I did try it again the next day and did the following

Final Revision(?)

2 oz pisco

1/2 oz lime juice (lime seems nicer than lemon in this)
1/2 oz grapefruit juice

3/4 oz St. Germain

1 tsp Tuaca

1/2 tsp Creme de Cacao

1/2 tsp Grenadine

This seems a slight improvement on the above. I’ve given it to a few people and no complaints so far.

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.

I had the remains of a pineapple in the fridge that needed to be put to use. I didn’t feel like drinking 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 taste interesting and I already knew it went well with Cuban rum in the Hemmingway Daiquiri.

The drink tasted pretty good. The main taste is rum, but the pineapple juice makes it slide down smoothly while the maraschino adds enough interest that it tastes like something other than a simple rum and juice mix. 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.