Ah, the beloved daiquiri. This cocktail is as mysterious and elegant as it is simple.

The daiquiri gave birth to what we now know in the bartending/cocktail world as the golden ratio. This includes cocktails such as the gimlet, cosmo, margarita, and many more. We will talk a little more about the golden ratio in a future post.

The daiquiri is a staple in any bartender’s repertoire, and has earned itself a place in the proverbial “Cocktail Hall of Fame”.

The daiquiri has a fascinating history, and as unbiased as I can be, a very beautiful one at that.

On the golden beaches of the south-eastern border of Cuba, Santiago lies. There is a small village within Santiago de Cuba called…. Daiquiri. Daiquiri, Cuba was where the first landing of the Americans was during the Spanish American War in 1898.

The story of the daiquiri, is foggy, as is such with many a drink in our history of cocktails!

However, there is one that remains prominent and is the one I hold on to be the closest to the truth.

HISTORY

#1 – Jennings Cox, an American mining engineer from Baltimore stationed in Daiquiri during the Spanish-American war, was attending some guests at his home in Cuba. He was preparing at the time, some drinks for his guests from mainland Cuba. Unfortunately for him, he ran out of GIN!

So what was he to do? Use what he had at hand, in the most supply. Rum was quickly subbed in for what he was using the gin for (essentially he was making what was gin and  lime juice, and some sugar… a GIMLET, but we will talk about the gimlet later). The daiquiri was said to be born right then and there. It was later spread in popularity through the locals, and then the American tourists picked up on it and spread to message even further to Florida and more.

#2 – The story or “myth” comes from Wayne Curtis’s book, And a Bottle of Rum. It was said that William Shafter, American military officer, was quartered in Santiago in 1898 during the Spanish American War. When not in battle, he was fond of the culture of food and drink in Cuba. In particular, he liked a drink that a Cuban local showed him: lime juice, sugar, and rum muddled together in a glass. He loved it, but felt something was missing; ICE. And so, as legend has it here, the daiquiri was born.

The funniest thing is that rum and sugar and spirit was a mix not too unfamiliar with the Royal British Navy around the 1700s. As we will soon find out when we talk a bit more about the grog, lime and rum was rationed on ships for a long time before it became the perfectly balanced rum cocktail we now know of and enjoy fervently. The brilliance of the daiquiri simply stems from the classic, simple foundation of the timeless punch: one sour, two sweet, three strong, and four weak (and part five, which most of us overlook, the SPICE component). Except the weak is exclusively from water, or the distillation from shaking the drink with ice.

A TIMELESS GEM OF A DRINK

With that being said, the daiquiri is a cocktail for the ages, and will not be forgotten anytime soon. It has gone through some often frowned-upon iterations, but nonetheless, is a staple in what is the rum drinking culture of today, and future generations to come.

Here is my favorite recipe for a classic hand-shaken daiquiri:

2oz White rum

0.75oz lime juice fresh-squeezed

0.75oz rich demerara syrup (2:1 raw sugar to water)

Shake all ingredients vigorously (there is no such thing as shaking a daiquiri “too hard”). Strain into a chilled coupe glass. Lime wheel garnish.

Salud!