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

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

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

An elegant Daiquiri Naturál in the Hotel Florida

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

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

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

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

A straightforward Daiquiri Frappé at the Hotel Ambos Mundos

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

It certainly isn’t the famous El Floridita.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Art Deco meets Neoclassical in the lobby of Havana’s Hotel Nacional

Freely as the rum flows in Havana, the selection is limited. Most rum countries are like this, but Cuba may be unique in the total lack of imports. Even Bacardi is conspicuous only in its absence. No Bacardi is remarkable enough, but even more peculiar is that many Cubans name Bacardi as their favorite rum. More on that curious situation later. . .

The visitor is thus limited to Cuban rums, a bibulous restriction I can happily report is no great hardship. Still, the adventurous voluptuary seeking a trial separation from the ubiquitous Havana Club can face a hard slog. Havana’s more touristy bars exclusively pour the brand that bears the city’s name. While the top shelf occasionally offers alternatives, even there the pickings are slim. The house pour in local bars may be something cheaper, perhaps Mulata, but Havana Club is never far away.

Inside La Bodeguita del Medio. . .

For those on a real budget, supermarkets and bottle stores sell rum in cardboard tetrapacks. Havana’s legions of underemployed and under-resourced can often be spotted lounging in the sun and sipping from these tetrapacks. Rum tetrapacks even pop up in lower end bars, either sold across the bar or casually smuggled in. I never tasted these tetrapacks. They may contain what Cubans would consider ‘aguardiente’ (see below) rather than true ‘rum’.

A bartender pours Mojitos in Lluvia de Oro, one of Havana’s most pleasant bars

Cubans pour rum with tropical liberality. The Cuban pour is languidly generous, as though, having set to work, the pourer discovers that returning the bottle to the vertical will involve unanticipated effort. The sensible course is naturally to lighten the load some more before attempting this taxing maneuver. A drinker can feel that the only thing being rationed is the ice. And that brings me to another thing, perhaps even a ‘complaint’. Havana bars score low in the ice department – disappointing for an Ice-Nazi like myself. Ice is always wet, stored in ice bins rather than a chiller, and you don’t get very much of it. Leaves more space in the glass for rum mind you.

El Morro, Havana’s harbor fortress

The tale about Cuban bartenders pouring a little rum on the ground for luck when opening a fresh bottle is true. I saw lots of bartenders do this. It isn’t done with any ceremony. Flicking some rum into the air is simply part of the routine of opening a fresh bottle – twist, toss, flick, pour. The ‘toss’ comes from the habit of tossing the cap away, at least in the case of mixing rum. With rum the national drink, this makes perfect sense since a bottle is rarely sitting around half-empty for long.

Inspiring revolutionary mural art

Drinkers and bartenders use a curious ‘secret language’ to discuss rum brands. In speech, certain brands are not referred to using their current names. Havana Club is straightforward, but Caney is spoken of as ‘Bacardi’, while Santiago becomes ‘Matusalem’. Cubans told me that these were the original names before the relevant factories were nationalized following the Revolution. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of that version of history, but I do know talking rum with Cubans becomes a most confusing business.

Interestingly, Cubans do not seem to rate Havana Club especially highly. I made a point of asking bartenders their favorite rum, and none of them named Havana Club. The clear favorite was Santiago (‘Matusalem’ in Cuban rummy lingo), with Caney (‘Bacardi’) ranking second.

Morning drinks at the Hotel Ambos Mundos

Cuban bartenders deserve a favorable mention in any discussion of the country’s rum culture. Tending bar seems to be a vocation in Cuba, and many bartenders are middle-aged to elderly guys with decades of experience. Ordering a mixed drink is mercifully free of drama, suspense or surprise, and reliably yields a quencher that performs exactly as intended. Interestingly, despite living in a country with few imported products, bartenders are quite knowledgeable about foreign rums. Names like Barbancourt and Appleton’s Estate are well known and well regarded. Importantly, Cuban bartenders are a friendly and down-to-earth lot, and happy to chat about things drinks related.

The Hotel Havana Libre, appropriated by Castro as his temporary headquarters after the Revolution

Cuba has numerous rum producers and the largest liquor stores and supermarkets stock a comprehensive range. Every producer offers a similar lineup, running from a white mixing rum through to a seven year old sipping rum, with two or three stops in between. Everything is bottled at around 40% alcohol by volume, and rums aged longer than seven years are rare. For rum shoppers, the ground floor of the Hotel Havana Libre has a liquor store with a comprehensive selection of local brands. The souvenir shop at the Havana Club Rum Museum also sells the full range of Havana Club products, including the hard to find Barrel Proof and 15 year old versions.

Sadly not a real rum bottle! The Havana Club Rum Museum

The Havana Club Rum Museum offers a useful introduction to the manufacture of Cuban rum, with the focus naturally enough on Havana Club. I found the tour rushed and formulaic but still worthwhile. According to the guide, Havana Club is made from a mix of two molasses-based rums, distilled to around 76% and 96%, respectively. The first provides the ‘body’, while the second provides the ‘soul’ – and presumably most of the alcohol. Both rums are double distilled in column stills. The rum is all aged for a minimum two years in bourbon barrels previously used for Wild Turkey. The exception to this two year minimum aging rule is the white, which is a blend of aged and unaged rums.

Antique still at the Havana Club Rum Museum

Cubans distinguish two variants of rum, namely ‘rum’ (in Spanish ‘ron’) and ‘aguardiente’ (which in English translates to something like ‘firewater’, or ‘spirit’). The more prestigious and dominant category is rum/ron. Aguardiente is the poor relation, and its definition varies depending on who you ask. Perhaps the situation is like that of rum and clairin in Haiti, with aguardiente being the rural and homemade product and rum the refined and industrialized version. The difference between rum and aguardiente (at least in Cuban terminology) may lie in distillation method. Most bartenders told me aguardiente is distilled just once, and to relatively low proof, while rum is distilled twice, and to high proof. However, others told me that aguardiente is distilled from fresh sugar cane juice while rum is distilled from molasses. Perhaps the aguardiente category contains multiple product types.

A bottle of the elusive aguardiente

Some Cuban rum producers offer aguardiente alongside their rums. For example Mulata offers both clear and aged versions of aguardiente. Aguardiente only rarely appears behind bars though, and unable to try the stuff by the glass I ended up having to buy a bottle (pictured above).

I found the Mulata aguardiente totally different to the same company’s rum, with a rough edge, robust flavor and almost chewy graininess. Cuba will probably never be famous for its aguardiente, but the stuff made for an interesting change from the highly refined and polished rums.

I only got the one taste of my Mulata aguardiente. On my last night in Havana a guy stopped me outside my hotel, asking for money to buy a can of coke. I told him to wait a second, grabbed the aguardiente from my room, gave him his coke money, and suggested he try an aguardiente and coke. He seemed pleased, and I freed up space in my luggage for a bottle of Caney seven year old – or should I say ‘Bacardi’?

Revolutionary decor in Havana’s Coppelia ice-cream parlor

Well over a year after I left the place, I’m finally writing about Cuba. I didn’t stay as long in Cuba as I would have liked. The lack of Internet in Cuba made work, and hence a lengthy stay, difficult. My stay lasted only five or so days, but during that time I devoted myself fully to drinking in the sights – and the rum.

I left Guatemala on a dawn flight, transited in Panama, and was in Havana by early afternoon. From arrival Cuba had its own unique feel. Havana airport was slightly worn, but red painted girders and splashes of yellow made it seem bright and cheerful.

Expecting military uniforms, I was surprised to see the immigration and customs officials dressed in casual jackets and colorful t-shirts. While superficially reassuring, the mufti disconcertingly blurred the identity of officialdom, and made it harder to sense if you were being singled out for special attention.

Immigration was a breeze though. Cuba’s issues with the U.S. mean immigration officers don’t routinely stamp passports. If you want a memento of your trip you have to ask for an entry stamp. I asked, and got the stamp plus a smile. Viva la Revolución!

I had organized accommodation in a Casa Particular (basically a home stay type arrangement, and better value than most hotels), and so hopped in a taxi and showed him the address.

Rain was pouring down. The country smelled fresh, and the scenes we passed on our way into town were under-industrialized and attractively shabby. The driver didn’t speak any English but we managed to have a bit of a chat. For part of the journey he complained in the way taxi drivers everywhere are wont to. For the rest of the journey we chatted about rum. He liked Arecha and thought Havana Club was expensive.

Afternoon on El Prado. . .

My accommodation was on a quiet side street (Trocadero) just west of El Prado, the grand central promenade running between El Malecón, as the seawall is called, and the central square of the old town. My hosts were a kindly elderly couple, and in keeping with their personalities the process of settling in unfolded pleasantly, but ever so slowly. Keys were fetched, forms signed, coffee poured, water heaters demonstrated, restaurants recommended, rum mentioned, money exchanged, and eventually I ended up with a key in my hands and the freedom to head out for a wander. Lovely as my hosts were, the whole process had taken a couple of hours, and I was anxious to just get out, explore, and just possibly drink some rum.

It was late afternoon by the time I was wandering in Havana. The air had a cool post-rain feel, the streets were generously sprinkled with people, grand old buildings decayed attractively, children played football, and the vibe was welcoming. People appeared remarkably fit and healthy, with the women being slim and toned and the men looking like they worked out. Possibly the food rationing effectively put everybody on a healthy diet, perhaps the relative absence of cars meant people walked enough to stay in shape, or maybe a lack of alternative entertainment options made exercise popular. Whatever the reason, Cubans were physically impressive and I couldn’t help taking it as a subtle advertisement for the revolution. Racially the population was a mix of Latin and African, but mostly the former. Many people had a very Italian look to them.

Although I arrived on a Sunday afternoon, the absence of commerce was surprising. My immediate neighborhood seemed to have a bakery selling a single style of loaf, a couple of hole-in-the-wall groceries with little on offer, a dark cafeteria, a produce market that seemed to have closed for the day, and little else. There were more shops on El Prado and around the central square. Few had much to sell though, and in many cases what they had was displayed behind glass and could only be got by asking for a cashier for help. Havana was no shoppers’ paradise.

The vintage automobiles Cuba is famous for stood out immediately. While they don’t exactly dominate the traffic these days, they still comprise a fair bit of it. Walking around I occasionally felt I had stumbled into a vintage film. Mostly the visual clues of the 21st Century were there, but occasionally they disappeared momentarily and you were left with nothing but the 1950s – maybe a quiet back street with a single gleaming vintage car, and a guy with barber’s shop hair strolling past in pants, braces and a singlet, swinging an ancient leather baseball glove. The people had a slightly Old World air about them, a combination of their choice in music (tending to the Buena Vista Social Club variety), their clothes (the local stores were some years from the cutting edge), and their rather polite and subdued manner.

On hitting El Prado I turned left towards El Malecón. Havana’s Malecón is a beautiful sea wall, and the perfect front door for a grand old Caribbean capital. I ended up down there every morning and soaking up the atmosphere through a leisurely run. Besides looking impressive, the giant waves that sometimes explode across the top of the thing added an interesting dimension to my morning exercise. Dodging the waves meant constantly alternating between sprinting and jogging on the spot – kind of interval training I guess. The highlight of my route each day was the Hotel Nacional, which occupies a commanding vantage point on a low cliff.

The Hotel Nacional

After checking out the water it was time to head back up El Prado and towards the central square. I was starving by this stage and decided to hold off trying any rum until after dinner. I headed for a place called Murral, a brew pub with a reputation for decent burgers. The burger was nothing special (though good by the dire standards of Cuban food), but the beer punched above its weight, and carried a refreshing sour edge.

El Floridita, a lighthouse beckoning Daiquiri-seekers

With dinner out of the way I headed to El Floridita for a real drink. The legendary Floridita was a disappointment, but first I’ll concentrate on the good. The décor is impressive, and on the surface appears little touched since Hemingway was a regular. The place still looks rather 1950s, and much like in the photographs of its heyday. Quality could be better overall, but they don’t overtly pinch pennies – using Havana Club 3 años their basic mixing rum. So I guess you do get a little extra for the high prices, though there are plenty of cheaper bars in Havana offering the same for less. Their blender drinks also have a nice quaffable consistency, perhaps the result of either blending for a decent length of time, or not overdoing the ice. Blender drinks have a habit of separating into ice and liquor, but those in El Floridita don’t.

El Floridita’s impressively decorated bar, surely still instantly recognizable to Hemingway himself

OK, time for the bad. These days the bar staff at El Floridita do not measure anything, do not squeeze fresh limes, and use an overly sweetened sour mix rather than lime juice and sugar. Big Constante, the legendary barman from the days when Hemingway was a regular, would not be amused. The famous ‘Papa Hemingway’ is an abomination. Supposedly it contains maraschino and grapefruit juice, but the grapefruit juice is from a packet and lacks any edge, and on the day I visited they were out of maraschino and substituted triple sec. Overall the place does not offer much, having degenerated into a nightly tourist performance rather than a genuine bar with regular customers. You pay high prices for it too, with a daiquiri being over US$6, compared to $3 or less in most other places.

So in summary El Floridita should be mostly, though not entirely, avoided.

Churning out the Daiquiris in El Floridita

I left El Floridita to explore some cheaper and more authentic bars. There were several to choose from just off the main square, but I settled on the atmospheric Bar Monserrate. It was a little touristy, but compared to El Floridita felt like an authentic local bar. The décor was simple and the atmosphere relaxed, with quietly casual but efficient staff and live music – Buena Vista Social Club again.

The lively Bar Monseratte

There I bumped into a German guy who had been made redundant by the financial crisis. He had been to Cuba a few times before and had some suggestions for me. While we chatted I tried a Mojito, and both Cristal and Bucanero beers – all good. The Bucanero seemed to be the strongest local beer, but was only a percentage point or so stronger than the Cristal. The Cristal tasted a little crisper, while the Bucanero was sweetish.

On the recommendation of the German I finished the evening by taking a taxi to a place called Jazz Café, which was supposed to have good live jazz. In the stairwell of the shopping center where the venue was located I got waylaid by a hooker. My attempts to get past her prompted aggressive questioning as to whether there was some problem with her looks. I had to apologize and say she was possibly the most beautiful woman in the world but it was really too dark to be sure. She laughed. So I guess my bad Spanish joke went over OK.

Cuban liqueurs. . .

I thus safely arrived at the venue only to find I was too early, with the music not starting until 11pm.   Instead of waiting around in the Jazz Cafe I went for a walk, and eventually found myself hunkering down for a couple of Mojitos in a deserted little neighborhood bar. The Mojitos were well mixed, better than at Bar Monserrate, and the friendly bartender gave me a lesson in how Cubans make the drink.

One of the nice things about Cuba is the friendly and down-to-earth bartenders. They are all competent enough (at least in matters concerning common Cuban drinks), don’t exhibit the prima donna tendencies of some Anglo-nation bartenders, and happily dispense advise to strangers.

A late night Mojito in a quiet cafe. . .

The hooker in the stairwell was gone by the time I returned to the Jazz Cafe.

Unfortunately I didn’t much care for the the music and so did not stay long. They were playing that post-60s style Cuban jazz – loud and unrelaxing. I think I was hoping for more of the Buena Vista Social Club that was being played everywhere else.

The Jazz Café was one of those places where you pay a cover charge that you then consume against. Either the cover charge was very high, the prices were very low, or I was very drunk, since I seemed unable to consume all I had paid for. I had a Mojito or two (decent), a plate of spaghetti (horrible) to ward off a hangover, then took the rest of my cover in half a dozen bottles of water to go.

As I left I saw the hooker from the stairwell sitting at a table with another girl and two guys. They were sharing a bottle of wine and seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Period decor at El Floridita

Leaving the bar I realized I was exhausted, plastered, spoke hardly any Spanish, and had left the card with the address of my hotel in my room. I jumped in a taxi, successfully negotiated a cheap fare home (failing to notice that the cheap fare resulted not from my sharp bargaining skills, but from the vehicle being a little three-wheeled motocab rather than a taxi as conventionally defined), somehow guessed the correct turnoff from the Malecon, and ended up directly outside my hotel door.

All in all, not a bad first day in Havana.

The Rough Riders take a break on top of San Juan Hill

Mixology Monday has rolled around and get and brought with it the theme of rum. The host of Mixology Monday XXVII is Trader Tiki. To be honest, this was never intended to be a Mixology Monday post. However, since the drink includes rum I guess I get a handy Mixology Monday entry for minimal effort.

I was rearranging my booze cupboard when I remembered I had a bottle of Kola Tonic that had never been used other than to make the Filmograph – from Ted Haigh’s Vintage Cocktails and Forgotten Spirits.

A few posts ago, while talking about the Early Fogcutter, I mentioned how small quantities of gin can do great things to rum cocktails. I mentioned the splash of gin found in early versions of the Cuba Libre. I repeated the story of how Teddy Roseveldt’s Rough Riders supposedly invented the Cuba Libre, noting that they could not have done so since Coca Cola was not sold in Cuba until some years after their departure. My eye fell upon the bottle of Kola Tonic and I wondered whether the Rough Riders might not have taken some type of Cola concentrate to Cuba with them.

This novel hypothesis offers a neat solution to the debate about the Rough Riders and the invention of the Cuba Libre. If they mixed the drink using a concentrate bought from the U.S. there would have been no need for coke to be available in Cuba at the time -simply mix the concentrate with soda water and voila! The locals were probably so impressed they decided to import Coca Cola themselves. Naturally, being Caribbean types who lacked the drive provided by a sense of Manifest Destiny, the Cubans let several years elapse before placing their order with the Coca Cola Corporation.

It makes perfect sense for the Rough Riders to have carried cola as a concentrate. They were on a military campaign, not a Caribbean holiday. Naturally they had to pack lightly – rifles, ammunition, rum, gin, bitters, Kola Tonic, silver cobbler shaker (no Boston shakers since glass was fragile and could become a hazard in the field). They would probably have been trained to live off the land for their lime supply.

So here is the concentrated version of the Cuba Libre, suitable for military campaigns, camping trips, and other occasions where circumstances demand you pack light. Note that this is indisputably the original version of the drink, as enjoyed by the Rough Riders themselves. You could equally well build this on ice and top with soda, but I think I like it served up. You can’t be fussing around with soda siphons as you prepare to assault San Juan Hill.

Rough Rider

1 ½ oz Cuban rum (Havana Club Blanco)

½ oz gin (Tanqueray)

½ oz lime juice

1 oz Kola Tonic (Roses)

1 dash Angostura Bitters

Shake over ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Charge up nearest hill.

Kola Tonic is more or less a concentrated Coca Cola taste, but seems less sweet and more bitter. This product was once widespread, but today only remains a staple in South Africa. Fortunately Auckland has a large South African community so it is easy to find here.

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).

Having made some quality grenadine, the next step is to find some drinks to try it in. Three drinks immediately come to mind, the Clover Club, the Pink Lady, and the El Presidente. The Clover Club and Pink Lady are simply grenadine sweetened and flavored gin sours, while the El Presidente is a complex rum, orange Curacao and vermouth affair that gets a gentle lift from a teaspoon of grenadine.

Recipes follow:

Clover Club

1 ½ – 2 oz gin

½ oz lemon or lime juice (juice of about half a lemon)

1 tsp – ½ oz grenadine (some recipes call for up to an ounce!)

1 egg white

Give a long shake over ice and double strain into a cocktail glass.

This one takes its name from a 19^th Century club of which it was the house cocktail. Made with good grenadine it is a simple but very respectable affair. The grenadine should add some pleasant fruit flavors as well as balancing the lemon. The egg white is essential. Be generous with the grenadine in this one since that is what gives the drink its character. The egg white also means you can add a reasonable amount without making things too cloying. Between the grenadine and the egg, the gin will slide down very easily indeed.

Pink Lady

1 ½ oz gin

½ oz calvados (or applejack)

½ oz lemon juice

1 tsp grenadine

1 egg white

Give a long shake over ice and double strain into a cocktail glass.

This drink adds uses apple brandy to lure the conservative Clover Club on a bit of an adventure. Nobody ends up getting hurt, and in fact the new combination works beautifully. The apple brandy now takes the lead, but good quality grenadine still helps add an additional layer of flavor.

El Presidente

1 ½ oz Cuban Rum (Havana Club 3 Anos works well, as does the Anejo Blanco)

¾ oz orange Curacao

¾ oz dry vermouth

1/2 – 1 tsp grenadine

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

This is a great Cuban drink dating from the early 20th Century. There seem to be a few variations floating around. Some use triple sec. Some use sweet vermouth. I think the above version is the original. Whatever variation you use, a good quality grenadine should come into its own here. The drink is already fairly sweet and does not particularly need an extra dose of sugar. What the grenadine does is add a little fruitiness to lift the drink (not unlike the lemon twist garnish), and improve the mouth feel.

So this time round, Mixology Monday (hosted at Kaiser Penguin) is about wickedly potent drinks – i.e. drinks you cannot safely drink more than one of. I didn’t have to think too long about what drink to write about. Since picking up a copy of Ted Haigh’s Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails, the Early Fogcutter has been a big favorite of mine, and one too rarely enjoyed. That being the case, Mixology Monday gave me a great excuse to mix one up.

Recipe follows:

½ oz orgeat (Monin)

2 oz gold Cuban rum (Havana Club 3 anos)

1 oz pisco (Machu Pisco)

½ Plymouth Gin

1 oz orange juice

2 oz lemon juice

½ oz float of cream sherry (Canasta Cream – a blend of Oloroso and Pedro Ximenez)

Shake over ice and strain into an ice filled hurricane glass or similar.

I find the sherry float tends to sink. No big deal but if it bothers you a sweeter sherry might help matters.

This recipe strikes me as a bit of an old school drink, with its generous quantities and calls for the use of numerous old-timey and slightly oddball bottles. The recipe is far better than any subsequent Fogcutter I have come across. The Tony Ramos Fogcutter, featured on the facing page in Ted Haigh’s book, does not remotely compare.

Yep, this is yet another great pisco drink. I honestly do not work for a pisco company. I just think pisco is sorely underrated. I like eau de vie generally as a cocktail ingredient. Since pisco has a lot of eau de vie characteristics I like pisco too. The pisco does wonderful things in this drink, complementing the orgeat and the sherry float, and adding some highly spirituous fruitiness that makes the rum merely another layer rather than the whole story.

The gin is another genius addition. Gin is an urbane spirit not normally associated with tropical drinks, yet used judiciously it helps restore the exoticism of the tropics to the jaded 21^st Century palette. No really, it does.

I have read claims that gin featured in the original Cuba Libre, so put on your best lab coat and perform this experiment. Toss a ½ ounce of gin into your next Cuba Libre, not forgetting to squeeze or muddle some lime in there too. Drink the resultant concoction. Regardless of the historical pedigree of the gin-spiked Cuba Libre, after trying one you are more likely to find yourself reaching for a second than worrying about the drinking habits of Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders*. A gin-spiked Cuba Libre is delicious. Small quantities of gin complement rum beautifully, adding complexity without causing the least disturbance. This early Fogcutter recipe is a great example.

Delicious! . . . as the Chinese say. Now do I dare to make a second?

* Just in case anyone does not know, the Rough Riders (a voluntary military unit sent by the United States to assist in the Cuban War of Independence) are alleged to have invented the Cuba Libre during their sojourn on Cuba. I am not convinced this story holds much weight, but there is no doubting it is often repeated. The main problem with the story is that the Rough Riders left Cuba in 1898, but Coca Cola did not become available in Cuba until 1900. Hmm. . .

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.