It’s a scene bordering on the cliché: a barrel-chested man commands his spot at an oak bar, his eyes piercing the dim light. He’s sipping something brown through a robust beard: whiskey. A man’s drink. The cornerstone of the Manhattan, the Old Fashioned, the Julep.

Now, mentally swap that heavy bottomed rocks glass with a slender-stemmed coup, and the whiskey for a pale, cloudy rum cocktail beaded with perspiration: a Daiquiri. For the kind of guy who has a hatchet in his apartment (or at least a really nice pocket knife), bellying up to a bar and ordering a whiskey is easy, but calling out for a Daiquiri with a stalwart voice is a whole different ballgame. It shouldn’t be.

Go to any chain restaurant with a bar menu and you’ll see something they call a Daiquiri. It's usually a neon hue of red and filled with strawberry syrup. This is not a Daiquiri. This is candy. Real Daiquiris are beautifully balanced, unmatched in their ability to refresh, and one of the most important benchmarks against which any bartender worth his or her shaker tin is measured. Order one at any high-end cocktail bar, and you'll instantly earn your mixologist's respect.

They were born on the shores of Cuba in the heat of conflict, spread out of wartime necessity, and favored by the likes of Ernest Hemingway and John F. Kennedy. Its simple construction conceals a sublime sophistication – something that takes five minutes to make, but a lifetime to master.

Its simple construction conceals a sublime sophistication – something that takes five minutes to make, but a lifetime to master.

History

To understand the Daiquiri, you have to understand Cuba – at least, more than just their cigars. The cocktail in question is named for a beach on which American soldiers landed during the Spanish-American War. It’s a Taíno word, a language born from the people who, as far as we know, originally inhabited the island and met Christopher Columbus when he landed on a similar beach four hundred years earlier. Their language is also the basis for “barbecue,” “tobacco,” and “hammock,” so the etymology of this liquid pinnacle of summer leisure seems apt.

Another cocktail that came from that time, the Cuba Libre, is named after the American involvement in what Teddy Roosevelt called a “splendid little war.” It was perhaps less splendid for the Cubans, who did the majority of fighting and dying for freedom from Spain, but the US walked away with a clutch of colonies, recognition as a newly significant global power, and a secured interest in such Cuban goods as iron and rum, both of which are key ingredients in the Daiquiri’s past.

Jennings Cox was an American mining engineer working in Cuba once the smoke cleared. By day, he figured out how to best drain the earth of its iron. By night, or at least by one night, he had to figure out how to keep the drinks moving at a party after running out of gin. Thinking fast, he took bottles of white rum (readily available on the island) and, according to a scrawled original recipe dated 1896 and now in the possession of Bacardi, added limes, sugar, mineral water, and ice to make a punch. His guests loved it. Imperial opportunism aside, it’s appropriate an engineer built a drink this perfect.

In 1909, a medical officer in the US Navy visited Cuba and brought the Daiquiri back to the Army and Navy Club in Washington D.C., and from there it made its way into the American cocktail world. Were it not for this unsung American hero, the Daiquiri could have stayed localized on the island for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, back in Havana, the owner of the Floridita bar combined the traditional ingredients with shaved ice in an electric blender, and the frozen Daiquiri was born.

Rationing of vodka and whiskey during World War II further propelled the Daiquiri’s popularity thanks to FDR’s Good Neighbor Policy, which made rum from Latin America both fashionable and easy to obtain. But as always, popularity had its price. Much like the Margarita and a host of other incredible tiki cocktails, the Daiquiri lost its way during the blender-fueled and sweetener-soaked cocktailpocalypse in the 70s and 80s. Pre-mixed neon orange and red sludge became what people expected, a notion that's just starting to erode today as the drink returns to its roots.

A Note on Grog

More than a century before the Rough Riders charged into the history books, another cocktail of sorts, Grog, spread across the world by sea. By some accounts, it was almost exactly a Daiquiri, though a little rougher around the edges. And certainly not served in a chilled coupe.

In the days when sailing ships commanded the seven seas, fresh water was stored aboard in casks, which eventually grew algae and made the water slimy. Quartermasters doled out measured quantities of beer or wine to improve the taste until, in the face of mounting costs and the annexation of the West Indies, rum was issued instead. You can imagine the result of giving bored sailors half a pint of straight rum every day then expecting them to climb dizzying heights of intricate rigging.

In 1740, British Vice Admiral Edward Vernon ordered that the men in his naval squadron be issued half a pint of rum mixed with a quart of water and added that, if they wished, sailors could purchase limes and other additives (including, perhaps, sugar) to make the drink more palatable. The idea was to dilute the rum, as well as its effect on the sailors. Vernon is said to have worn a coat made of grogram cloth, earning him and the drinks he served the nickname “Old Grog.” There’s no evidence that grog was ever was translated into an actual Daiquiri, but it’s not totally unbelievable that an enterprising young sailor stumbled upon the recipe out in the sun and surf.

Vernon’s order, incidentally, was eventually adopted by the entire British navy and lasted in some form until 1970.

The Rum

The story of rum, in many ways, is the story of the Western Hemisphere. The developed European world wanted what we know of today as refined sugar. The New World had sugar cane, which was shipped to Britain and made into white sugar. Molasses – sweet, thick, and sticky – was a byproduct of that refinement process with few uses except as a starting point of rum. And so molasses was shipped to New England, made into rum, and sold to essentially everyone in society. The money from those sales funded the slave trade in West Africa, which further fueled the sugar plantations in the New World.

Today, rum is still made from molasses, cane juice, or other sugar byproducts. That byproduct is fermented, distilled and aged, just like a lot of other spirits. Differences between rums depend on a lot of factors, ranging from the source of the sugar to what kind of barrel it’s aged in and for how long.

Silver, white, or light rums are subtle in flavor and ideal for mixing. White rum sits in oak barrels for a relatively short period of time to round out its flavor profile and is then filtered through charcoal to remove its color. From there, rums get darker and more intense in flavor, ranging from gold to dark or black. The darker the rum, the longer it’s been aged and the deeper and more complex its flavor, generally speaking.

Dark rums are every bit as heady and complex as whiskey and can similarly be sipped without accompaniment, either neat or on the rocks. And exactly like whiskey, one could devote an entire career to learning the intricacies of the rum craft and all of the scions and subfamilies within the spirit, from rhum agricole distilled from sugarcane juice to naval rum, 100-proof stuff that gained notoriety in the aforementioned fleets.

White rum is used in the Daiquiri because of its essence, in general, both melds with and pulls together more pronounced flavors. In this case, bitter lime and sweet sugar. It’s a forgiving spirit, too – even if you’re not picking from the top shelf, you can still wind up with a more than satisfactory cocktail.

The Sweet and the Sour

One part sour, two parts sweet, three parts strong, four parts weak. If you know nothing else about building a cocktail – whether it’s in a single glass or a punch bowl – you really can’t lose if you follow that time-honored drinker’s verse. It’s the formula for balance, which is where the Daiquiri rises, exultant. In this case, sour is lime juice, sweet is simple syrup or granulated sugar, strong is rum and weak is melted ice. The perfect drink.

Recipes differ on whether to use simple syrup or fine grain sugar. For novices operating from a home bar, simple syrup is likely the way to go. Why? Well, lime juice is an incredible cocktail ingredient, but only if it doesn't overpower the drink, so sugar in some form has to be represented to offset it. If you pour out your Daiquiri and see a semi-granulated sludge in the bottom of the shaker, it's not properly incorporated into the mixture, and so your drink is going to be dominated by lime tartness – and therefore isn't going to taste great. The best way to avoid that is simple: syrup. (Not apologizing for that.)

To make simple syrup, just put a 1:1 ratio of water and regular, granulated sugar in a small saucepan. Turn the burner to low and stir occasionally so the grains dissolve without burning, and be careful not to boil the mixture. Once all the sugar dissolves, take it off the heat, let it cool, and put it in some vessel in the fridge. Mason jars are fine, but it’s a lot easier to pour if you use a small plastic squirt bottle – easy to find online, or if you have a local restaurant supply store, you can buy them there – or something like a repurposed single-serving club soda or tonic bottle. (Side note: using those little bottles for cocktails is way more efficient than buying a liter bottle of tonic or soda and dumping 90 percent of its flat contents the following week).

The opposing argument, which likens the Daiquiri to the Old Fashioned, is that if you're using granulated sugar, you can simply muddle or stir it into the lime and gin first, then shake with ice to perfection, sans granular sludge. The reason is not without merit – simple syrup does give a certain mouthfeel. Silky, some might say, or filmy. Whichever route you take, never multiply the amount of sweetness in your cocktail. If you want a very sweet drink, the Cuba Libre, (rum, Coke, and lime), is for you.

As for the sour side of the equation, all you need is fresh-squeezed lime juice. No sour mix. No industrial-sized, overly sweetened and soured bucket mixes The difference between cocktails today and those awful cocktails in the 1980s are fresh ingredients and basically just giving damn.

The Variations

Frozen Daiquiri: Goes without saying, but we have to say it anyway. If you go this route, do it like they did in 1930s Havana and put your ice and ingredients into a blender, pulse until smooth, and serve. This is actually a really convenient way to quickly make a big batch Daiquiri. And if you must have a Strawberry Daiquiri, this is the way to go about it.
Hemingway Daiquiri: It’s said Papa Hemingway put these away with both gusto and regularity. Add maraschino liqueur like Luxardo and grapefruit juice to the regular recipe. Also, double the rum.
Don’s Special Daiquiri: The tiki bar legend Don the Beachcomber used three different rums (white, gold and 8-year aged Bacardi) and sweetened the drink with honey or agave nectar and passion fruit syrup.
Vermouth Daiquiri: Swap rum for a 1:1 split of dry and sweet vermouth. This is a substantially lighter cocktail, typically for long-drinking summer afternoons – in the same convention as a spritz.

The Recipe

All of the above alter or build upon the same elegantly simple base. We shake a Daiquiri because alone, none of these ingredients are particularly pleasant. The citrus juice has to bind with the rum, and everything has to be balanced with a blanket of subtle sweetness. Stirring opens the possibility of ingredients remaining semi-isolated, making every sip different and sub-optimum.

Also, we recommend double straining this cocktail after shaking, meaning you strain with a cocktail strainer from the shaker into a fine mesh strainer above the glass. The first strainer, of course, catches big pieces of ice. The fine mesh filters out any lime pulp as well as tiny ice shards that break off during shaking, making for an incredibly smooth, cool, drinkable summer cocktail.

Ingredients

2 oz. white rum
1 oz. fresh-squeezed lime juice
½ oz. simple syrup (or 1 tsp. refined sugar)
Ice

Preparation

Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker and fill ⅔ with ice.
Shake vigorously until shaker begins to develop frost.
Double strain from shaker through fine mesh cocktail sieve into chilled coupe glass.
Garnish with lime peel.

Mix It Up: The Daiquiri