The Daiquiri: Rum, Lime, Sugar and Soul

Some mixed drinks started out as medicines and magic potions –as digestives (like an Aperol spritz), aphrodisiacs or something to warm the bones on a cold winter’s journey (like a hot gin sling). The daiquiri has always been about sweet, refreshing relief from the heat.

The drink originally came from a Cuban iron-mining town where tired workers concocted a kind of rum sour as a pick-me-up made with local ingredients. One story goes that an American mining engineer, Jennings Stockton Cox, mixed the first daiquiri in the early 1900s when American guests came to visit and he embarrassingly ran out of gin. He wrote a cocktail recipe in his logbook that involved lemons and distilled water, which went over well enough, but after a few years of refinement (or perhaps just conferring with the miners over a few chilled glasses), a better recipe made its way to the Army & Navy Club, where military officers took it all over the world.

During Prohibition, Cuba became a popular (and boozy) weekend getaway for American tourists, and the daiquiri evolved to meet any palate. Today, some Miami connoisseurs might sneer at the frothy frou-frou of a blended strawberry daiquiri as a silly novelty, but the Biscayne Tippler respects the long heritage behind it, and, at summer’s close, the physical imperative to beat the heat.

From something strawberry syrup-infused at Let’s Make A Daiquiri (a bar way out west in Dolphin Mall) to a classic La Floridita served at The Corner (1035 N Miami Ave.), the Biscayne Corridor pours a daiquiri for every taste and any occasion.

At any Havana 1957 location (there are four in Miami Beach alone), along with a decent meal you can enjoy a classic daiquiri or a fruit-infused, contemporary frozen version. At Wynwood’s Beaker & Gray, mixologists under the careful tutelage of Ben Potts transmute the drink’s elements into something unexpected and even sublime.

“The daiquiri is an amazing cocktail,” Potts said. “I enjoy one when I’m in the mood for something tart and refreshing, but also as a teaching tool for aspiring professional and home mixologists.”

Potts’ cocktail consultancy (through Unfiltered Hospitality, a company he co-founded) has shaped the bars and beverage menus of hot spots from Taquiza in North Miami to Baby Jane on Brickell and Sala’o Cuban Restaurant & Bar on Calle Ocho. For him, a good daiquiri is serious business.

“In its purest and my favorite form, a daiquiri is nothing more than rum, lime and sugar,” he explained. “The most basic recipe calls for two parts of a white or light rum, one part fresh lime juice and one part simple syrup, which is one part sugar to one part water, by weight – and that’s it. You can make this cocktail just about everywhere rum is sold; the daiquiri’s balance can be used as a guide when experimenting with other sour cocktails, the family of cocktails that the daiquiri falls under. It always has been and always will be one of my favorite drinks.”

Ernest Hemingway gets credit for some of the first successful experiments with the form of this cocktail. A heavyweight, he once polished off 17 daiquiris in one session at La Floridita bar in Havana. That was some time after he’d asked mixologist Constantino Ribalaigua Vert to halve the sugar and double the rum, creating the drink now known as the papa doble, or Hemingway daiquiri.

Ribalaigua also devised another daiquiri for his most famous customer, which he called the Hemingway Special. Instead of sugar, it relies on Luxardo maraschino liqueur and the naturally subtle sweetness of grapefruit. Today we have blenders, so there’s no need to use Ribalaigua’s more labor-intensive method.

Our Biscayne Times editor swears by the Hemingway daiquiri at Sala’o Cuban Restaurant & Bar, which always presents in a pale shade of pink, perfectly tart and with a hint of cherry. And if you’re a Hemingway aficionado, you’ll love this Papa Hemingway-themed restaurant inspired by the author’s last piece of major fiction, “The Old Man and the Sea.” You’ll drink and laugh at numerous Hemingway quotes on the wall, including the very true: “Write drunk, edit sober.”

In the days before blenders, Ribalaigua put another twist on this refresher by serving it mixed to near freezing and poured over chipped ice. Today’s drink snobs might dismiss the “alcohol slushie” approach, but it was good enough for Papa.

“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,” rhapsodized Hemingway in “Islands in the Stream.” “The frappéd part of the drink was like the wake of a ship and the clear part was the way the water looked when the bow cut it when you were in shallow water over marl bottom. That was almost the exact color.”

So much for the classics. If you’d like to stretch your wings while cooling your brow – or if you just prefer a little more earthy oomph to your spirits – try the Bahamian twist found in “Difford’s Guide.”

Enjoy your explorations!

CLASSIC DAIQUIRI

INGREDIENTS

·     2 ounces white rum

·     1 ounce lime juice

·     1/2 ounce demerara syrup (equal parts water and demerara sugar, heated until sugar dissolves)

METHOD

• Add ingredients to a shaker filled with ice; shake and then strain into a coupe glass and garnished with a twist of lime.

HEMINGWAY SPECIAL

INGREDIENTS

·     3 ounces white rum

·     Juice of 1/2 grapefruit

·     Juice of 2 limes

·     6 drops of Luxardo

METHOD

·     Fill a blender 1/4 full of cracked ice; add all ingredients and blend until uniformly light and cloudy.

·     Serve in a cocktail or martini glass.

BAHAMAS DAIQUIRI

INGREDIENTS

·     1 1/2 ounces overproof pot-still rum

·     3/4 ounce coconut rum

·     1/4 ounce Kahlua

·     1 1/2 ounces fresh pineapple juice

·     1/2 ounce lime juice

METHOD

·     Shake well with ice and fine-strain into a chilled glass.