El Floridita Daiquiri

Wayfinder

The El Floridita Daiquiri is the house version from the Havana bar that called itself la cuna del daiquiri, the cradle of the daiquiri. Two things separate it from the shaken original: five millilitres of maraschino, and the fact that it is blended rather than shaken. The maraschino is a seasoning rather than a sweetener. At that measure you would not identify it blind; what you notice is that the lime tastes brighter and the rum tastes rounder. It perfumes the drink without adding anything you could call cherry. The texture is the other half. Constantino Ribalaigua Vert, who ran the bar through the 1920s and 30s, used the newly available electric blender not to make slush but to shave the drink into fine, dry frost. It arrives in the coupe holding its shape like a snowbank and is drunk through a straw as it gives way. Texture as an ingredient in its own right, which almost nobody was doing at the time.

FrozenClassic

Glassware: Coupe Glass

Garnish: Lime Wheel on the rim or nothing

Ingredients

Serves

White Rum

60ml

A characterful Cuban-style white rum. The frappé's cold mutes everything, so a thin rum disappears entirely and you are left drinking flavoured ice.

Fresh Lime Juice

15ml

Fifteen millilitres, which is short for a daiquiri, because the blended ice brings dilution the shaken version does not. Squeeze gently to keep the peel's bitter oils out of the juice.

Maraschino Liqueur

5ml

Five millilitres, and real maraschino rather than the syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries. It perfumes the drink with cherry stone and almond without sweetening it, which is the whole point of the recipe.

Simple Syrup

10ml

Ten millilitres, and restrained on purpose. Cold mutes sweetness, so the drink is balanced for the temperature it arrives at rather than the temperature you made it at.

Instructions

Add the rum, lime juice, maraschino and simple syrup to a blender.

Add a cup of fine, dry crushed ice on top.

Flash blend for 5 to 10 seconds: the target is fine snow, not slush.

Pour unstrained into a chilled coupe, mounding rather than levelling the ice.

Serve immediately with a short straw.

Expert Tip

The ice decides the texture and the texture is the drink. Fine, dry crushed ice blends to snow; wet ice that has been standing blends to slush; cubes from a freezer that smells of anything will taste of it. Put the liquids in first, the ice second, and stop the blender at the first moment everything looks uniform. Five to ten seconds is usually the whole job. Squeeze the limes gently. Ribalaigua was specific about this and he was right: crushing the fruit forces bitter oil out of the peel and into the juice, which shows in a drink with this little sugar in it. Serve it the moment it is made. A frappé that has stood for two minutes has already lost what it was for.

Flavour Profile

LimeCherryAlmondBrightIcy

Where It Comes From

El Floridita opened in Havana in the early nineteenth century and spent the twentieth becoming the most famous cocktail bar in the Americas. Constantino Ribalaigua Vert took over behind the bar in 1918 and ran it until his death in 1952, and it was under him that it began calling itself la cuna del daiquiri.

Ribalaigua codified the daiquiri into a series of numbered variations. The numbering differs between sources and is not worth arguing about; what is consistent is that the version with a measure of maraschino and a blended texture is the one that carried the bar's name out into the world, and it is the one still made.

The Blender

The electric blender reached bars in the 1920s and most of what was done with it was bad. Ribalaigua used it for something specific: not to liquidise a drink but to shave ice fine enough that the finished cocktail held its shape in the glass.

That is a different objective from a frozen daiquiri, which is a slush you drink like a milkshake. This is a frappé. The drink sits mounded in the coupe and you pull liquid through it with a straw as it slowly gives way, so the last mouthful is colder and more dilute than the first.

Treating texture as an ingredient in its own right was genuinely novel at the time, and it is still the reason the drink is worth the equipment.

The Maraschino

Five millilitres in a drink of ninety is a seasoning measure, and it behaves like one. Maraschino is made from whole Marasca cherries including the stones, so it carries an almond and faintly medicinal note alongside the fruit, and it is not especially sweet.

What it does here is lift. The lime reads brighter, the rum reads rounder, and there is a floral top note a plain daiquiri does not have. Nobody tasting it blind would say cherry. Use the syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries instead and all you have added is sugar.

Getting the Ice Right

This is the part that goes wrong, and the blender is not the variable. The ice is.

Crushed ice that is dry and properly cold blends to snow. Ice that has been standing and is already wet blends to slush, because you are adding water rather than shaving it. Cubes from a freezer with anything strong in it will carry that straight into a drink with nothing to hide behind.

Liquids first, ice on top, short burst, stop. Over-blending warms it, and there is no going back from that.

How to Serve It

Poured unstrained into a chilled coupe, mounded rather than levelled, with a short straw.

Immediately. A frappé has a working life of about two minutes before it starts to collapse, and there is no rescuing one that has been left standing while somebody photographs it.

The Spirit

White Rum

White describes a filter rather than an age. A good deal of light rum spends time in oak and then has the colour taken back out with charcoal, which leaves the roundness that ageing gave it and none of the shade.

Learn more

Frequently Asked Questions

How is this different from a regular daiquiri?

Two things: five millilitres of maraschino liqueur, which perfumes the drink without sweetening it, and the frappé texture, flash-blended with crushed ice into fine snow rather than shaken and strained. Same bones, very different drink in the glass.

What does the maraschino actually do?

At five millilitres it is a seasoning rather than a sweetener. It gives the drink a cherry-stone and almond top note that makes the lime taste brighter and the rum rounder. Much more than that and it takes the whole thing over.

Do I need a blender?

For the true Floridita texture, yes. The drink is defined by its shaved-snow body and that is not something a shaker produces. A hard shake with crushed ice makes a very good daiquiri, but it is the shaken cousin rather than this.

Is this the same as a frozen daiquiri?

No, and the difference matters. A frozen daiquiri is blended to a slush you drink like a milkshake. This is a frappé: shaved fine, holding its shape in the glass, and drunk through a straw as it gives way.

Master the Techniques

How to Shake a Cocktail Like a Pro

Daiquiri

The Daiquiri is a sour in its most elemental form: white rum, fresh lime juice and sugar syrup, shaken and served up. Three ingredients, no bitters, no liqueur, nothing to hide behind. It takes its name from a mining district on the south-eastern coast of Cuba, near Santiago, where Jennings Cox, an American mining engineer, is credited with combining local white rum with lime and sugar around 1898. Whether Cox invented it or documented what Cuban workers had been drinking for years is not something the record can resolve. What is not disputed is that it was refined and popularised in Havana at El Floridita by Constantino Ribalaigua Vert. The simplicity is the point and the problem at once. There is nothing in the construction to compensate for a poor rum, juice that was not squeezed fresh, or a syrup made carelessly. Every variable is fully exposed, which is why a properly balanced Daiquiri demonstrates more skill than a ten-ingredient tiki drink.

Hemingway Daiquiri

Ernest Hemingway wandered into El Floridita in 1932, tried the house daiquiri and issued his amendment: no sugar, double the rum. The bar named the result the Papa Doble, and its most loyal customer reportedly worked through them in scarcely credible quantities, a drink for a man who distrusted sweetness and wrote like it. The honest truth is that the original Papa Doble is a punishing drink: 120ml of rum, no sugar, all austerity. The version the world now calls the Hemingway Daiquiri is the civilised descendant, with grapefruit joining the lime and maraschino carrying all the sweetness, and it is a better cocktail than its patron ever ordered. He would probably have objected, which is part of the charm. What survives from the great man’s spec is the drink’s character: bone-dry, citrus-forward and bracing, the daiquiri stripped of its plush. Alongside its sibling, the maraschino-kissed Floridita No. 3, it shows how far one bar in Havana stretched three ingredients and a lime press.

Mojito

The Mojito is one of the oldest Cuban cocktails on record, its roots traced to a sixteenth-century proto-version called El Draque, named after Sir Francis Drake, whose fleet anchored off Havana in 1586. Drake’s sailors mixed local aguardiente, the rough precursor to Cuban rum, with mint, lime and sugar as a remedy for dysentery and scurvy. The combination has proved more enduring than the illness. The modern Mojito is built on white rum, with soda water extending it into a long, refreshing serve suited to the Cuban climate. Hemingway is associated with it through La Bodeguita del Medio, and whether that association is accurate or partly mythologised is debated. The drink does not need it. Technique matters here more than most high-volume bars are willing to invest in: mint pressed rather than muddled, lime squeezed fresh, sugar dissolved before the rum, and soda poured gently enough to survive into the first sip.