Hemingway Special
To talk about this cocktail one needs to talk about daiquiris and we need to go back to Cuba for this. It was 1898 and it had something to do with a US Engineer called Jennings Stockton Cox Jr. who was stationed in the town of Daiquiri, Cuba while working for the Pennsylvania Steel Company. At the time, Cox found himself facing considerable challenges - the Spanish-American War was ongoing, and cases of yellow fever were spreading amongst the local population. He needed a drink. Cox experimented with ingredients that were readily available in Cuba. He combined local rum with fresh lime juice and sugar. Locals had been using that combination in different ratios already which led Cox to try the same. That was how the first Daiquiri was ever made, out of the hearth of a bar minus the seasoned hands of a posh bartender.
The story goes like this, it was the 1930s and Ernest Hemingway had earned himself permanent stardom with his novel Death in The Afternoon. Having a crowded home filled with family, friends and fellow literature fanatics Hemingway needed an escape. He booked a one-way ticket to Cuba and stayed at the Ambos Mundos Hotel to write without interruptions. Hemingway had his fun too and bar hopping was one of them with the American Prohibition having recently ended he had full freedom to try out the local tipples.
It is said that the author needed a bathroom break so he stopped at the El Floridita bar, Havana. On his way out he spotted the bartender, Constantino Ribalaigua Vert lining the bar with his famous daiquiris. He’s not the inventor obviously but he did invent the frozen version of it. Never being one to say no to a drink, the writer picked one up and took a sip. He told Vert he preferred his unsweetened and with more rum and the bartender mixed one for him and thus was born the Hemingway special. Well, it was called the Papa Doble initially but with little tweaks and additions it evolved into this new cocktail named after the author. To quote the very man, “It shouldn’t taste of rum, it shouldn’t taste of lime and it shouldn’t taste of sugar. It should just taste of daiquiri.”
In his later novel, Islands in the Stream, Hemingway immortalized it sublimely, “This frozen daiquiri, so well beaten as it is, looks like the sea where the wave falls away from the bow of a ship when she is doing thirty knots.” He became a regular fixture at the bar and is famously said to have downed 16 in one sitting. Records say he usually chose an isolated corner where he could read, write and drink without interruptions. Here’s how you can concoct the author’s favourite with the signature rum and its juices.
Ingredients
Method
Fill a shaker with ice, add the rum, lime juice, grapefruit juice and Maraschino liqueur.
Shake vigorously until everything inside is chilly.
Pick a martini or a coupe glass and strain the drink into the glass.
You can garnish the cocktail with a lime slice.
