Now that summer is here, the time is propitious for enjoying one of the great, if greatly abused, warm weather cocktails: the daiquiri.
The daiquiri was a bit of an odd sensation, taking hold in Cuba in the 1920s when Havana was a short paddle for American tourists looking for a getaway from the strictures of the Volstead Act. Odd, because there wasn’t exactly anything new about combining rum, lime juice, and sugar.
In the 1880s, there were more than a half-dozen companies in Tobago alone making rum shrub, described as “a liqueur made with rum, lime juice, and sugar.” In 1809, a visitor to Jamaica described the colonial ruling class there as exhibiting “a chaos of licentiousness, indecency, and profanation,” thanks to drinking debauches “carried to a most shameful and incredible excess.” The drink of choice was strong punch, “sometimes half rum, and that not always ameliorated by age, half lime juice, sugar, and water.” There was planter’s punch and ti’ punch and Navy grog, all of which featured a combination of rum and lime juice.
In 1920s Cuba, there were still more rum and lime combinations, such as the Havana Club rickey (2 oz rum, 1/2 oz lime, and a shot of fizzy water on ice in an Old-Fashioned glass — a little sugar optional). There was the Cuban cocktail (a daiquiri minus the sugar) and another Cuban cocktail (a daiquiri with apricot brandy instead of sugar).
What do I mean when I say the daiquiri has been abused? I don’t mean in the falling-off-the-wagon way but rather in the awkward gringo-ification of the drink’s name and the sad pre-fab-frozen-DayGlo-green-goop-in-a-can way in which the drink has been regularly manufactured.
Let’s start with the name of the drink and how it is pronounced. American writers who were told about the drink in the ‘20s or ‘30s often spelled the name “dykaree,” which tells us how the word was originally pronounced. But when the spelling was eventually corrected to the Cuban place-name daiquiri, readers of bar menus and travelogues Americanized the pronunciation so that the drink came to rhyme with Thackeray.
But enough of the ABCs — on to the concoction, which brings us to the other way the daiquiri has been mistreated.
Making a “frozen” daiquiri (or any drink “frappé,” for that matter) used to be the bane of bartending. Before swing-era bandleader Fred Waring marketed his “blender,” getting the right slushy consistency for a frozen drink was a nightmare of cracking, shaving, crushing, and pulverizing ice. It was tedious. It was tiresome. But with the blender at the ready, it was all of a sudden the easiest of bar tasks — the press of a button.
We should have been happy with the convenience and contented ourselves with cutting and squeezing limes in all the time we would otherwise have been laboring over the ice. But no, we had to have it easier still. Who wants to squeeze all those limes when the grocery store has pre-frozen cardboard cans of processed citrus-like substance tinted a green unknown to nature? Thus the lazy man’s daiquiri: a couple of cans congealed limeade, some ice, some glugs of cheap rum, all combined with push-button ease.
We can do better. Crush some ice and put it in the blender with 2 ounces rum, the juice of a lime, and a tablespoon of sugar, more or less, to taste. Mix on high for a minute or two. Serve in a saucer champagne glass with a short straw.
Not that it is really as easy as all that. In his uncompromising and aloof 1948 book, The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, David Embury describes the very particular particulars of serving a frozen drink: “The mixture should be heaped up in the glass in the shape of an inverted cone,” Embury instructs. “This may be accomplished by pouring part of the drink into a medium-meshed strainer, holding the strainer above the glass, and tapping its side.”
Still, the daiquiri is a pure expression of the foolproof combination of spirit, citrus, sugar, and ice. Abjure shortcuts and it will reward your efforts all summer long.
Eric Felten is the James Beard Award-winning author of How’s Your Drink?
