Imagine yourself in 1950s Havana, Cuba.
The floor-to-ceiling palm trees in the bar are gently swaying in the ceiling fan breeze. The place is packed with men in white suits and Panama hats and women in fitted, low-cut dresses. Or maybe Josephine Baker is purring seductively at you and the swank crowd in a nightclub. As the glamorous world plays itself out, you stand sipping on a cold, refreshing and tangy rum daiquiri.
Sadly, with the lasting 1960s trade embargo, Havana is but a dilapidated, muted vision of its former glory. The popular American association with daiquiris is of a sweet, frozen, blended pink concoction. Back in the day, this was a real drink.
In essence, the daiquiri is simply a rum sour - lime, sugar and rum, with ice. Depending on the source material, two Americans are credited with bringing the drink to Havana around 1905: Jennings Stockton Cox and/or William Shafter, both of whom tasted similar beverages while on the Cuban coast in the late 1890s. Though all three ingredients were always plentiful (except ice), and a sour mixture couldn’t have been anything new, the drink known as “Ron Bacardi a la Daiquirí” now had an official name.
Daiquiris soon became part of the Latin bongo boom that hit 20th century America and were consumed in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1920 classic novel This Side of Paradise. During Prohibition, privileged Americans flocked to nearby Cuba for daiquiris and other legal rum drinks. The 1940s and ‘50s saw the popularity of clubs like the Tropicana and Copacabana and stars like Ricky Ricardo. Back in Havana, American writer Ernest Hemingway was pounding daiquiris at La Floridita, the “local” where he reputedly once drank 16 in one sitting. It was there that bartender Constante Ribailagua came up with the Hemingway variation of the daiquiri (see below).
Ribailagua is also credited with creating the first frozen version, though this is still far from the neon-colored slushy of today. This first version was strained into the glass, the crushed ice used for temperature purposes only. But just as modern Americans are discovering the true essence of ethnic cuisines, the classic cocktail movement has brought the original daiquiri back from the sludge.
This transportive deliciousness is but a few shakes away.
It’s easy to build on this basic recipe, switching out fruit juices and adding different liqueurs. The Mojito is essentially the same cocktail with added muddled mint and club soda to finish, as is the Caipirinha, made with Brazilian cachaça. Keep in mind that certain rums are sweeter than others, so the lime to sugar ratio may need to change depending on what you’re using.
The preparation is the same for all three: Add all ingredients except the garnish with ice in a shaker. Shake well to combine. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish.
The Original Daiquiri
Ingredients
2 oz light rum
1 oz fresh lime juice
¼ - ½ oz simple syrup
The Hemingway Daiquiri (a.k.a. Papa Dobles or Daiquiri No. 3)
Depending on the sweetness of your rum, you may want to omit the simple syrup as the maraschino already adds sweetness. Some like it tart!
Ingredients
1 ½ oz white rum
¾ oz fresh lime juice
½ oz fresh grapefruit juice
¼ oz maraschino liqueur
¼ - ½ oz simple syrup (optional)
Daiquiri Para un Invierno Cálido (Daiquiri For a Warm Winter)
This variation uses a deeper rum with bitters, tangy pomegranate and seasonal oranges.
Ingredients
2 oz golden rum (such as Rhum Clement V.S.O.P.)
¾ oz fresh tangerine, clementine or naval orange juice
¼ oz pomegranate molasses
¼ oz maple or simple syrup (for added sweetness, optional)
3 dashes Daiquiri bitters (Peychaud’s will work if you can’t find them)
Comments
hirsch
Very illustrative note,I will try to prepare me one of them
Mar 08, 2012 at 4:52 PM
s
Yum yum -- very inspired to try the Papa Dobles :)
Mar 08, 2012 at 6:14 PM
Forgot about the Hemingway version. It is an excellent daiquiri, but then which one isn't :). Thanks...
Mar 08, 2012 at 10:10 PM
Oakes
Here's an article by Wayne Curtis which ran in The Atlantic about Hemingway daiquiris: http://bit.ly/Curtis_daiquiri
There are a couple of incredible passages in Islands in the Stream where the Thomas Hudson character gets bombed on these drinks in Cuba. Two things worth noting are that the Waring blender was invented in 1937 so the blended version has been around a long time. Hemingway also writes about the drinks being frozen, so I'm going to guess they were mixed with some kind of chipped or shaved ice. These lines from the book are great:
"This frozen daiquiri, so well beaten as it is, looks like the sea where the wave falls away from the bow of a ship when she is doing thirty knots."
"He had drunk double frozen daiquiris. The great ones that Constante made, that had no taste of alcohol and felt, as you drank them, the way downhill glacier skiing feels running through powder snow and , after the sixth and eighth, felt like downhill glacier skinng feels when you are running unroped.
Mar 16, 2012 at 5:39 PM
Thank you for unearthing the story of Hemingway allegedly having 16 at once. I can now only image the actor from Midnight In Paris doing that and then saying "Who wants to fight!".
Mar 18, 2012 at 6:09 PM
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