Daiquiri

This article is about the mixed drink. For the Cuban village, see Daiquirí.

Daiquiri

Classic daiquiri served in a cocktail glass
Type	Cocktail
Ingredients	60 ml white Cuban rum 20 ml fresh lime juice 2 bar spoons superfine sugar
Standard drinkware	Cocktail glass
Served	Straight up: chilled, without ice
Preparation	In a cocktail shaker add all ingredients. Stir well to dissolve the sugar. Add ice and shake. Strain into chilled cocktail glass.

The daiquiri (/ˈdaɪkəri, ˈdæk-/; Spanish: daiquirí [dajkiˈɾi]) is a cocktail whose main ingredients are rum, citrus juice (typically lime juice), and sugar or other sweetener.

The daiquiri is one of the six basic drinks listed in David A. Embury's classic The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, which also lists some variations.

Origins

Daiquirí is also the name of a beach and an iron mine near Santiago de Cuba in eastern Cuba, and is a word of Taíno origin.

After the short-lived Spanish American War several American expats stayed on to take advantage of the changes taking place in Cuba after the Spanish left. Among them, Charles Little, who after leaving the volunteer US Army (rough riders) became a manager of a sugar plantation near Daiquiri. According to Little after his return to the States, as relationships developed between the English speaking expats, including Jennings Cox, a mining engineer at a nearby iron mine, they began meeting in Daiquiri to play cards and drink. Their preferred liquor was imported gin, and not the local "common man's" liquor, rum. This went on until they ran out of gin during a dry period for imports, and they became of necessity interested in rum, and how the local population drank it. Contrary to popular historians' opinion about who "invented" the drink that in time would be given the name "Daiquiri" back in the States, it should be clear what the Cubans had readily on hand in abundance: limes, sugar, and rum, so it need not be "invented", except possibly for adding ice when it became available.

A few years later, during a visit to Cuba by Rear Admiral Lucius W. Johnson with the U.S. Navy, he inquired about "who was doing what" on the island and was told about the card game of expats in Daiquiri, so he went down for a visit. There he learned about the basic drink and took the (secret) formula back with him the prestigious Army Navy Club in DC. When asked he said he discovered it in the Cuban town of Daiquiri; so it got its name.

Originally the drink was served in a tall glass packed with cracked ice. A teaspoon of sugar was poured over the ice, and the juice of one or two limes was squeezed over the sugar. Two or three ounces of white rum completed the mixture. The glass was then frosted with a long-handled spoon. Later the daiquiri evolved to be mixed in a shaker with the same ingredients but with shaved ice. After a thorough shaking, it was poured into a chilled coupe glass.

The Daiquiri was subsequently refined and popularized by Emelio “Maragato” Gonzalez and Constantino “Constante” Ribalaigua Vert in Havana.

The basic recipe for a daiquiri is also similar to the grog British sailors drank aboard ships from the 1780s. By 1795 the Royal Navy daily grog ration contained rum, water, ¾ ounce of lemon or lime juice, and 2 ounces of sugar. This was a common drink across the Caribbean, and as soon as ice became available this was included instead of the water.

Consumption of the drink remained localized until 1909, when Rear Admiral Lucius W. Johnson, a U.S. Navy medical officer, tried Cox's drink. Johnson subsequently introduced it to the Army and Navy Club in Washington, D.C., and drinkers of the daiquiri increased over the space of a few decades. It was one of the favorite drinks of the writer Ernest Hemingway and U.S. President John F. Kennedy.

The drink became popular in the 1940s. World War II rationing made whiskey and vodka hard to come by, yet rum was easily obtainable owing to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Good Neighbor policy, which opened up trade and travel relations with Latin America, Cuba, and the Caribbean. The Good Neighbor policy, also known as the Pan-American program, helped make Latin America fashionable. Consequently, rum-based drinks (once frowned upon as the choice of sailors and down-and-outs) also became fashionable, and the daiquiri saw tremendous popularity in the US.

Variations

A strawberry daiquiri.

• Hemingway daiquiri (Hemingway special) – or papa doble – two and a half jiggers of white rum, juice of two limes and half a grapefruit, six drops of maraschino liqueur, without sugar.
• Mulata daiquiri: rum mixed with either coffee or chocolate liqueur and with fresh lime juice and sugar syrup
• Old Rose daiquiri: strawberry syrup and rum along with two teaspoons of sugar and lime juice
• Royal Bermuda Yacht Club: Barbados rum, fresh lime juice, Cointreau, and falernum, recorded since 1941.

Frozen daiquiri

A wide variety of alcoholic mixed drinks made with finely pulverized ice are often called frozen daiquirí. These drinks can also be combined and poured from a blender, eliminating the need for manual pulverisation and producing a texture similar to a smoothie. On larger scales, such drinks are often commercially made in larger machines and come in various flavors with various alcohol or liquors. Another way to create a frozen daiquiri (mostly fruit-flavored variants) is by using frozen limeade, providing the required texture, sweetness and sourness all at once.

Variations

• Banana daiquiri – regular daiquiri with half a banana.
• Strawberry daiquiri – a blender drink of puréed whole strawberries, rum, cane sugar and lime juice

See also

• Floridita - A historic bar linked to Daiquiri in Havana, Cuba
• List of cocktails
• Caipirinha – similar Brazilian cocktail
• Ti' Punch – similar French Caribbean cocktail
• Mojito – other popular and similar rum cocktail, adding lime, mint and soda
• Liquor portal

References

Bibliography

• Daiquiri Story

External links

• Media related to Daiquiri at Wikimedia Commons
• Daiquiri at Wikibooks