Coming clean on daiquiris
DAIQUIRIS have a clean, crisp ancestry, from Cuba, where they were invented by an American engineer, Jennings Cox, around the turn of the 20th century in a mining town that gave the drink its name.
The original daiquiri made use of three ingredients the engineers had on hand: citrus, sugar and Bacardi rum.
Cuban bars now usually make blended daiquiris, and that frozen quality has become the only definitive element of many a local “daiquiri”.
It is generally a sweet, boozy frozen drink, often not even made with rum, but with grain alcohol. A single serving contains about 33 grams of sugar.
The classic daiquiri is a subject of some reverence in the industry. Juan Coronado, national brand ambassador for Bacardi rums, tests potential employees with the drink.
“Each time I hire people, I observe how they make a daiquiri – the quantity of ingredients, their flair, their ovation to that magnificent cocktail.” The cocktail was invented with Bacardi rum, he says, “a rum that is dry, that neither dominates nor disappears in a cocktail… The daiquiri is not a sweet nor a sour cocktail. It is just a perfect marriage of those three ingredients.” None of which, for the record, is sodium benzoate or high-fructose corn syrup, each of which add that certain je ne sais quoi to the slushy-machine daiquiris sucked down by tourists and locals alike. Much futzing, of course, occurs in bars, and Bacardi’s global advocacy director, Jacob Briars, says that’s part of the daiquiri’s appeal. “There’s a very small window for how to make a daiquiri well, but within that window, is room for almost endless tinkering,” he said. You can tweak everything from the kind of limes to the kind of sugar and what form and strength that sweetener comes in; many bartenders opt to make a 2-to-1 sugar-towater syrup to cut down on dilution. The daiquiri has become “almost a universal language, using rum, lime and sugar, long understood across the Americas and now beyond,” says bar owner Nick Detrich. “Everyone can love and understand it.” – The Conversation