We’ll be Havana good time again at Vino this Thursday as when we’ll be using El Dorado Rum and Luxardo Maraschino to mix the classic Cuban cocktail: Daiquirì! Traditionally made from rum, lime juice and sugar, this quintessential Cuban cocktail is said to have been invented around 1800 by a group of American mining engineers working at the Daiquirì iron mine near Santiago. It was Jennings Cox, General Manager of the Spanish American Iron Co., who is credited with creating the drink at the Venus bar, not far from Daiquirì beach. Some believe Cox accidentally came up with the Daiquirì after he ran out of gin.

The daiquirì remained a local favorite until the early twentieth century, when Admiral Lucius W. Johnson, a U.S. Navy medical officer, introduced the drink to the Army and Navy Club in Washington, D.C. By the 1940s, as Latin America’s cultural appeal increased, the cocktail began to obtain international status thanks to those served at Havana’s El Floridita bar (above), seeping its way into popular culture thanks to famous daiquirì drinkers such as Ernest Hemingway, JFK and, er, Fredo Corleone.

Today the El Floridita is content to mine its past as a hangout for Cuban exiles such as Hemingway, whose statue props up the bar, while his hand-written message of affection rests appended to the wall: “My mojito in La Bodeguita, my daiquirì in El Floridita.”

Cocktail Hour: DAIQUIRÌ
Thursday, January 26
5:30-7:30pm