Mary Pickford

Wayfinder

The Mary Pickford is Prohibition Havana's love letter to the movies: white rum, fresh pineapple, a blush of grenadine and a whisper of maraschino, mixed in the early 1920s for the actress it is named after. Pickford was the first great star of the silent era and a co-founder of United Artists, and she was in Havana with Douglas Fairbanks while their own country was dry. The attribution usually lands on Fred Kaufman at the Sevilla-Biltmore, though record-keeping in that city in that decade was not what it might have been. The build is fruit-first with two precision seasonings. Real grenadine tints the pineapple rose-gold without candying it, and maraschino's dry cherry-and-almond funk supplies the structure that keeps prettiness honest. Both pour at 7.5ml and both matter more than that measure suggests. It reads sweet on sight and finishes considerably drier than its colour promises, which is the whole trick.

ShakenClassic

Glassware: Coupe Glass

Garnish: Maraschino Cherry

Ingredients

Serves

White Rum

45ml

The Havana frame, kept clean underneath the picture. A light Cuban-style rum is right; anything heavily aged competes with the fruit rather than carrying it.

Fresh Pineapple Juice

45ml

Equal to the rum, so half the drink is pineapple and the freshness rule is absolute. Fresh juice shakes to a rose-gold silk with a foam no carton can produce.

Grenadine

5ml

The blush. Real pomegranate tints the pineapple rose-gold without candying it, and the bright red supermarket bottle is coloured sugar with no fruit in it at all.

Maraschino Liqueur

7.5ml

The structure inside the prettiness. Dry cherry-and-almond funk keeps the fruit honest, and 7.5ml is doing considerably more work than the measure suggests.

Instructions

Add the rum, pineapple juice, grenadine and maraschino to a shaker with ice.

Shake hard for 12 seconds.

Double strain into a chilled coupe.

Garnish with a cherry.

Source: the IBA (Official IBA specification; method ours). Last checked 13 August 2026.

Expert Tip

The two seasonings are equals at 7.5ml each, and the temptation is to treat them as garnish measures and be generous. Do not. Grenadine paints and maraschino builds, and doubling either one collapses the balance in a different direction: too much grenadine turns the drink into fruit punch, too much maraschino puts almond over everything and buries the pineapple. Use real grenadine, made from pomegranate. The bright red supermarket bottle is coloured sugar syrup with no fruit in it, and in a drink where 7.5ml is doing visible work you will taste the difference immediately. Fresh pineapple juice or nothing. Half this drink is pineapple, and fresh juice shakes up with a fine natural foam that carton juice cannot produce at all. It is the single biggest variable in the glass.

Flavour Profile

PineapplePomegranateCherryAlmondRosy

Where It Comes From

Hollywood wintered in Havana through Prohibition. The island was wet, the crossing was short, and the bars named drinks after the visiting firmament as a matter of routine business.

Mary Pickford got hers in the early 1920s. She was the industry's first genuine superstar and, with Fairbanks, Chaplin and Griffith, a founder of United Artists, which made her one of the very few actors of the era who owned the studio as well as appearing in it. The drink is usually attributed to Fred Kaufman at the Sevilla-Biltmore, though attributions from that decade in that city should be held lightly.

It outlived the era, the hotel's heyday and the studio system that made her.

The Two Seasonings

Grenadine and maraschino pour at 7.5ml each, and the equality is the spec's craft. They do opposite jobs.

Grenadine is the colour: real pomegranate turning half a coupe of pineapple juice into something rose-gold, with a faint tartness underneath that stops it reading as syrup. Maraschino is the depth: dry, funky, faintly almond, and it lands under the fruit rather than on top of it.

Take either one out and the failure is obvious. Without grenadine the drink is a pineapple daiquiri and looks like one. Without maraschino it is pretty and slightly hollow, sweet at the front with nothing holding the finish.

The Pineapple Standard

Half the drink is pineapple juice, which puts the freshness question beyond argument. Fresh juice is sharper, more perfumed and considerably less sweet than the carton version, which has been heated for shelf life and tastes of it.

The mechanical difference matters as much as the flavour. Fresh pineapple juice carries proteins that whip into a fine, stable foam under a hard shake, and that foam is a visible part of the finished drink: a pale collar on a rose-gold surface. Carton juice produces a thin bubble layer that collapses before the glass reaches the table.

Against the Hotel Nacional

The two drinks come out of the same decade, the same city and very nearly the same bar culture, and they are built on the same idea: white rum and pineapple with a second fruit in the supporting seat.

The Nacional seats apricot brandy there and adds lime, which makes it sharper, drier and more obviously a sour. The Pickford seats grenadine and maraschino, which makes it rounder, prettier and more dessert-adjacent without ever actually being sweet. Poured side by side they explain the whole Havana style in about four minutes.

How to Serve It

Up in a chilled coupe, promptly, with a good cherry. Double strain it: fresh pineapple carries fibre, and the drink should arrive as silk rather than pulp.

Serve it cold and drink it quickly. The foam is part of the presentation and it does not last, and the glass warms faster than most because there is no ice in it. If you are pouring for a group, squeeze the pineapple ahead but shake to order, because juice that has stood for an hour has lost the foam entirely.

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

Who was the Mary Pickford made for?

The actress herself, on a visit to Prohibition-era Havana with Douglas Fairbanks. Pickford was the first great star of the silent era and a co-founder of United Artists. The drink is usually credited to Fred Kaufman at the Sevilla-Biltmore.

Is it very sweet?

It is prettier than it is sweet. Grenadine and maraschino pour at only 7.5ml each, and the maraschino's dry funk holds the finish, so the drink lands considerably drier than its rose-gold colour promises. The pineapple supplies most of what sweetness there is.

What is the difference from a Hotel Nacional?

The second fruit. Both are white rum and pineapple from the same Havana decade, but the Nacional adds apricot brandy and lime, which makes it sharper and more obviously a sour. The Pickford uses grenadine and maraschino and lands rounder.

Does the grenadine really matter?

Enormously, at that volume. Real pomegranate grenadine brings tartness and a genuine rose-gold colour; the bright red supermarket bottle is coloured sugar syrup with no fruit in it, and it turns the drink flat pink and noticeably sweeter.

Master the Techniques

How to Shake a Cocktail Like a Pro

Hotel Nacional

The Hotel Nacional is a pineapple daiquiri with ten millilitres of apricot brandy in it, and that small measure is what makes it worth knowing. Pineapple and rum on their own are holiday drinking. Add stone fruit underneath and the whole thing acquires depth: the apricot's kernel note runs beneath the pineapple and gives the drink a finish it otherwise would not have. It is named for the Hotel Nacional de Cuba, the clifftop hotel that opened in Havana in 1930 and went on to host most of the twentieth century, from Churchill and Sinatra to the mob conference of December 1946. The drink is generally attributed to its bar in the 1930s. It sits between the daiquiri's discipline and the piña colada's abandon, which is a useful place for a drink to be. The rum, the lime and the small syrup measure keep the sour structure intact, and the fruit sits on top of that rather than replacing it.

El Presidente

El Presidente was created in Havana during the 1910s or 1920s, most likely at the Vista Alegre bar, and named in honour of Mario García Menocal, President of Cuba in that era. It emerged from the same scene that produced the Daiquiri and the Mojito, shaped by Prohibition-era American tourists who arrived with money, time and a thirst their own country was legally denying them. It is a stirred rum drink in the Manhattan tradition: white rum and dry vermouth as the base, orange curaçao as the sweetening modifier, and a small measure of grenadine that adds colour, a faint pomegranate depth and a sweetness rounding the drier components. The result is spirit-forward and elegant rather than tropical, and one of the most underappreciated drinks in the classical canon. The dry vermouth determines the quality of the finished glass more than anything else. At this volume alongside the rum, a stale bottle defines the drink for the wrong reasons before the rum can make its case.

Bacardi Cocktail

The Bacardi Cocktail is a daiquiri with grenadine in it, and it is one of a very small number of drinks anywhere with legally enforceable contents. In 1936 the New York Supreme Court held that a drink sold under the name has to be made with Bacardi rum, which remains a peculiar thing for a court to have had to decide. The drink predates the lawsuit. It is a Prohibition-era Havana daiquiri blushed with grenadine, carried north by the considerable traffic between New York and Cuba, and poured openly the moment repeal allowed it. The grenadine replaces most of the sugar rather than joining it, which is what keeps it a daiquiri rather than a cordial. Made honestly, with real pomegranate grenadine and lime squeezed to order, it is simply a very good daiquiri in evening colours. The law cares which bottle. The drink mostly cares that it is a good one.