Classic Daiquiri Cocktail Recipe – The Whisky Exchange

19 July is Daiquiri day!

Citrus sharp and refreshing

One of Cuba’s greatest cocktails, the classic Daiquiri is simple to make yet difficult to balance. It was invented by American engineer Jennings Stockton Cox, while working in Cuba, near the town of Daiquiri in the early 1900s. As with most classics, there are several accounts of how the island’s local white rum, Bacardi, came to meet lime and sugar.

Cox’s workers received a monthly ration of rum and, according to one version of the tale, he observed his Cuban employees mixing this with their evening coffee. Inspired he began experimenting. A further version places Cox with a fellow visiting engineer when the two men set about mixing up a cocktail with the ingredients to hand: lime, rum and sugar.

Cox’s granddaughter however claims her grandfather had been playing host to a group of Americans when they drank the last few drops of gin. Wary of serving neat Cuban rum to these foreigners he mixed it with lime and sugar. However the Daiquiri was invented, by the mid-1910s the cocktail had journeyed from the shores of Havana across the States, and brought with it a passion for rum.

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