History of the Daiquirí  Cocktail

The daiquiri is a type of cocktail made from rum and lemon juice or lime. Its name comes from the Playa Daiquirí (Daiquirí Beach) on the south coast of Cuba, close to Santiago de Cuba, and from the old iron mine in that area.

The combination of sugarcane liquor and lime or lemon juice was the popular drink of the mambises of the Liberation Army in the eastern part of the island during the second half of the 19th century. In the adverse conditions of the mountains and the jungles in that they were living, for the mambises it was difficult to tolerate the cold of the dawn, so that they had invented this mixture to keep them warm. This drink, named La Canchánchara, was quenching their thirst in the fight against the Spanish colonial army, and it was also an excellent remedy to calm down after being injured or to get ready to fight. Some of the mambises preferred to sweeten this mixture by adding honey. They were producing the spirit from the sugar canes by hand. Normally, it was consumed in containers, called jícara, that were made of the dried fruit of the plant, called güira. The ratio of the cane spirit to the lime or lemon juice was 3:1.

After the Spanish-American War in 1895, the Italian Giacomo Pagliuchi, the engineer, and the captain of the Liberation Army, received the prerogative to reactivate some old copper mines located close to Santiago de Cuba. During his visit to Daiquirí in 1898, he met Jennings Stockton Cox, the American engineer who was working in the iron mine there. One day when they wanted to talk and drink together, they noticed that they had neither gin or vermouth, but only Bacardí rum, cane sugar, lemon, and ice.  Cox added lemon juice and sugar to the local dry rum to improve its flavor. They put rum, lemon juice, cane sugar and ice into the shaker, beat the mixture and prepared a drink. When Plagluichi asked Cox how they would name the cocktail, Cox replied “rum sour”, because in the United States there was a drink called whiskey sour that was made by whiskey, sugar, lemon juice and ice. Hereupon Pagliuchi came out against calling the drink with this name, because it was very long to his opinion, and said: “Why we don’t call it daiquiri?”.

When Plagluichi and Cox went to the city of Santiago de Cuba, they visited the bar “American Club” together. When they asked for a Daiquiri cocktail as a joke, the bartender says that he didn't know such a cocktail. Thereupon, Cox explained the formula of the cocktail; he made even a recommendation to beat the shaker until it would be very cold. Everyone in the bar liked the new cocktail, and very soon it became very popular in Santiago de Cuba, spreading throughout the island in a short time, although going from one place to another was not easy at all in Cuba at that time.

According to the other explanation about the origin of the daiquiri, the cocktail was named by General W.R. Shafter, commander of the troops that landed on the beach of Daiquirí during the Spanish-American War in 1898. He was aware of the distinction of the combination of rum, lemon juice, sugar, and ice from other drinks, because La Canchánchara had become his favorite drink during the days that he spent in Cuba.

While Cox and Pagliuchi were working on the ingredients and the composition of their new cocktail, a Spaniard named Emilio González (1869-1940), who worked at Café Telegrafo in Havana, began to popularize a similar cocktail to Cubans who were not used to cocktails. As a matter of fact, he soon became the famous bartender of Hotel Plaza thanks to his new cocktail. It is attributed to Emilio González, that he brought the formula of the new cocktail to Havana, to the capitol of the island, but daiquiri is immortalized by Constantino Ribalaigua Vert (the great Constant), the bartender of El Floridita.

Constantino Ribalaigua Vert, nicknamed as El Grande Constante (the Great Constant), was a foresighted person. He learned the new cocktail, the Daiquri, from the immortal bartender Emilio González (known as Maragato) that was working in the nearby Hotel Plaza. However, instead of copying the preparation of the cocktail, he tinkered endlessly mixing the ingredients to find the best combination of the new drink. Thus, he created at least four different versions of the daiquiri. When he discovered that the infinitely crushed ice kept the cocktail slush and cool, he created the blend that we know today: the frozen daiquiri. He brought an ice machine from the United States, the Flak Mark chipper, and prepared a metal box with holes on the bottom to keep the crushed ice in good condition for longer time. He added five drops of Marrasquino (Marrasquino or Maraschino is a liqueur obtained from the distillation of Marasca cherries) to the Pagliuchi's initial formula, calling it Daiquiri Floridita, and used crushed ice in form of tiny pieces, like a frappé. He used an electric mixer instead of the hand shaker because he gave importance to the exact shaking time. He filled the stemmed cocktail glasses with ice to chill them before he served the cocktail in the same glass. It was by far the most important to stick to the proportion of the ingredients of the daiquiri (number 4 or Daiquiri Floridita). El Floridita, operating since 1819, is known as the cradle of the daiquiri, because Constant made big effort to find the best combination of the ingredients of the new drink.

The fame of the daiquiri went beyond Cuba, when Lucius W. Johnson, doctor in the UN navy, after returning from Cuba introduced it to the Navy Club in Washington, DC in 1909. He also wrote an article about his meeting with Jennings Cox and the new cocktail in the newspaper Baltimore Sun.

The Daiquiri cocktail became more popular over time, becoming one of the favorite drinks of the Cuban people and an emblematic drink of the island. Its formula transmitted from bartender to bartender with slight modifications. In 1939, when Ernest M. Hemingway was staying in Ambos Mundos Hotel that is 200 steps away from El Floridita, he discovered the daiquiri. He increased the fame of the daiquiri with a phrase that attracted many tourists: "Mi mojito en La Bodeguita, mi daiquirí en La Floridita / My mojito in La Bodeguita, my daiquiri in La Floridita”. He used to drink daiquiri almost every day; especially the Papa Doble variant that had been created under his appellation, papa (the dad). Over the 100 years, it became one of the first things that people from all over the world asked, when they arrived in Cuba. Thus, El Floridita where the sculpture of Ernest Hemingway has been placed, became one of the sine qua non of the tourists that visit Havana.