Queen’s Park Hotel Super Cocktail

Queen’s Park Swizzle

A Queen’s Park Swizzle is 60ml of Demerara rum, 22.5ml of fresh lime juice and 15ml of demerara syrup over eight pressed mint leaves, swizzled with crushed ice in a highball until the glass frosts, then topped with more ice, four dashes of Angostura and a mint bouquet. About 2.5 UK units. It takes its name from the Queen’s Park Hotel in Port of Spain, Trinidad. The Oxford Companion says it first saw print in the 1946 Trader Vic’s Book of Food and Drink as a drink from the Queen’s Park Hotel in Trinidad, and that its creation was likely between 1933 and 1938. No bartender is named with it. Difford’s Guide says Trader Vic called it, in that book, “the most delightful form of anesthesia given out today”. The bitters go on last and are left alone. Drunk through a straw from the bottom of the glass, it opens on lime, mint and rum and closes on the Angostura as the bitters work down through the ice.

Daiquiri

A Daiquiri is 60ml white rum, 20ml fresh lime juice and two bar spoons of caster sugar. Stir the sugar into the rum and lime in the shaker until it dissolves, then add ice, shake hard for 10 to 12 seconds and double strain into a chilled coupe. About 2.4 UK units. Those are the IBA’s measures, and its method dissolves the sugar first too. The name belongs to Daiquirí, an iron-mining district and beach near Santiago de Cuba. Difford’s Guide credits Jennings Stockton Cox, an American engineer who led one of the first mining parties into Cuba’s iron-ore country after the Spanish-American War of 1898; the Oxford Companion has him making or supervising the first Daiquiri in 1896, and a Santiago bartender naming it in 1908. Difford’s says Constantino Ribalaigua Vert of Havana’s El Floridita made the frozen version famous. With three ingredients and no liqueur or bitters, the Daiquiri hides nothing. A flat rum, tired lime or undissolved sugar shows in the first sip.

El Presidente

El Presidente is a stirred Cuban rum drink: 45ml white rum, 22.5ml dry vermouth, 10ml orange curaçao and 7.5ml grenadine, stirred for 20 to 30 seconds over ice and strained into a chilled coupe, finished with an expressed orange peel. It drinks like a light rum Manhattan, dry and aromatic, with a pale pink colour from the grenadine. Basil Woon’s 1928 book on Cuba calls it one of the two cocktails most in demand in Havana. Who created it and which president it honours are both disputed: the Floridita’s own 1939 book prints a 1937 report crediting Constante Ribalaigua, and Bar Vademecum reports David Wondrich naming Mario García Menocal, president from 1913 to 1921; Bar Vademecum adds that the story of a drink named for Gerardo Machado cannot be right for the earliest recipes, since Machado was not elected until 1925. Older recipes use Chambéry, a blanc vermouth sweeter than dry: two parts to one of rum in Escalante’s 1915 manual, half and half in Basil Woon’s 1928 account. Ours uses dry at two to one with a little more curaçao. Each one comes to about 2.6 UK units.

Hotel Nacional

A Hotel Nacional is 45ml of gold rum, 45ml of fresh pineapple juice, 15ml of fresh lime juice and 5ml of dry apricot brandy, shaken hard with cracked ice for 10 to 12 seconds and strained into a chilled coupe. It is Charles H. Baker’s 1939 recipe, with his jigger taken as 45ml, his teaspoon as 5ml and the juice of half a lime as 15ml. About 2.0 UK units. It is a pineapple daiquiri with a trace of stone fruit underneath, and no sugar but the pineapple’s own. The dry apricot brandy is a teaspoon, a kernel note under the fruit rather than a flavour in front of it. The lime keeps it a sour rather than a fruit cup. The name is the Hotel Nacional de Cuba’s, which the Oxford Companion calls Havana’s grandest luxury resort when it opened in 1930, and Difford’s Guide lists the drink as the Hotel Nacional Special. Baker credits Wil P. Taylor, the hotel’s manager from 1931 to 1933; Difford’s adds that Eddie Woelke and Fred Kaufman have been credited too.