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Slideshow
Top five cocktails for National Rum Day
Daiquiri
A simple blend of white rum, lime juice and sugar, the creation of the Daiquiri is attributed to American engineer in Cuba Jennings Cox at the turn of the 20th century, though it may have in fact been invented by Catalan bartender Constantino Ribalaigua Vert at Havana hotspot El Floridita.
Named after a beach and an iron mine near Santiago de Cuba, the refreshing cocktail gained popularity outside Cuba when Admiral Lucius W. Johnson, a US naval officer, introduced it to the Army and Navy Club in Washington DC.
Writer Ernest Hemingway was such a fan of the drink the Hemingway Daiquiri was created in his honour at El Floridita, which blends white rum, lime juice, grapefruit juice and maraschino liqueur, finished with a lime wedge. The writer enjoyed his eponymous Daiquiris so much he reportedly drank them in glasses as large as vases and once boasted of downing 16 of them in one sitting.
Dark ‘n’ Stormy
Berumda’s national drink is traditionally made with Gosling’s Black Seal rum, ginger beer and lime. The vivifying cocktail has a naval history. In the 1800s it was common practice for the British Royal Navy to give rum rations to sailors sourced from naval bases on rum-producing Caribbean islands like Bermuda.
Ginger beer was brought to the Caribbean by English colonists – Barrit’s ginger beer was created in Bermuda in 1874 by William John Barrit and still exists to this day. Sailors soon started adding ginger beer to their rum, a well known cure for seasickness also thought to ward off flu, aid digestion and stimulate circulation, while the lime in the drink was added to ward off scurvy.
The name Dark ‘n’ Stormy came about when a sailor held up the drink, which looks like a dark cloud gathering in the glass when the rum is added, described the concoction as the colour of a cloud “only a food or a dead man would sail under”.
Piña Colada
Everyone’s favourite guilty pleasure means “strained pineapple” in Spanish. A blend of rum, coconut milk and pineapple, the tiki drink is thought to have been created by a pair of Puerto Rican bartenders at the Caribe Hilton Hotel’s Beachcomber Bar in San Juan in 1954 and has been the Caribbean island’s national drink since 1978.
However, the Barrachina Restaurant in Old San Juan contests the claim, insisting the creamy drink was invented by its bartender, Ramón Portas Mingot, in 1963. Going back even further, the Piña Colada may have in fact been devised by Puerto Rican pirate Roberto Cofresí to boost his crew’s morale in the early 19th century, though the recipe was lost with his death in 1825.
The drink is served either blended or shaken with ice and garnished with a pineapple wedge, a maraschino cherry, or both. It gained notoriety after the 1979 hit Escape (The Piña Colada Song) by American singer Rupert Holmes, which featured in the 2013 film The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.
Mojito
Britain’s favourite cocktail originated in Havana, Cuba. Served in a highball glass, the drink muddles white rum, sugar, lime juice, soda water, and mint. Its original recipe used spearmint or yerba buena – a mint variety popular on the island.
The Mojito’s origins can be traced back to the 16th century to a drink known as “El Draque”, named after British privateer Sir Francis Drake. The story goes that following his successful battle of Cartagena de Indias in 1586, Drake’s crew were struck by an epidemic of dysentery and scurvy while headed for Havana and went ashore to Cuba to gather ingredients to create an elixir to help alleviate their symptoms.
They came back with aguardiente de caña (a crude form of rum made from sugarcane), lime (for warding off scurvy), sugarcane juice and mint, a simple recipe from which the Mojito is said to have been created. The origin of the name of the cocktail is disputed, with some believing it derives from the Spanish word mojadito, which means “a little wet”, and others attributing it to the “mojo” creole marinades made with citrus.
Mai Tai
A heady blend of dark rum, orange curaçao liqueur, orgeat syrup and lime juice, the Mai Tai was invented at the Trader Vic’s restaurant in Oakland, California, in 1944 by Victor J. Bergeronon. On handing the drink to Carrie Guild, a friend visiting from Tahiti, on her first sip she allegedly cried out “maita’i roa ae,” which translates as “the best” in Tahitian. The original recipe was made with 17 year old Wray & Nephew rum.
The cocktail, which is often garnished with a maraschino cherry, became popular in the 1950s and ’60s at tiki-themed restaurants and bars, despite it having no authentic links to Hawaii or the South Pacific, and featured in the 1962 Elvis Presley film Blue Hawaii. There are many different twists on the drink including the addition of pineapple juice – a version Bergeronon created specifically for the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Honolulu.