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Time for a Drink: Hemingway Daiquiri

Posted by Paul Clarke, August 31, 2007 at 6:00 PM

Let's get this weekend started right. Here's a cocktail to kick things off. Need more than one? Here you go. Cheers!

First things first: it's not really Hemingway's daiquiri.

That one was much more fierce. In his memoir Papa Hemingway, longtime friend A. E. Hotchner described the daiquiri served under that name (or under its more familiar moniker, the Papa Doble) at Havana's legendary Floridita bar.

...a Papa Doble was compounded of two and a half jiggers [or 3 3/4 ounces] of Bacardi White Label Rum, the juice of two limes and half a grapefruit, and six drops of maraschino, all placed in an electric mixer over shaved ice, whirled vigorously and served foaming in large goblets.

Second correction: While the recipe is correct, the quantity probably wasn't the same as what Hemingway was served, either. Hotchner noted this was the drink served to curious visitors who came to the writer's favorite Havana watering hole and asked to drink what Hemingway drank. The ones served to Hemingway, he wrote, were served "in conical glasses twice the size" of the turisto version; without specifying how much these glasses held, Hotchner later referred to them as "vases."

"Here we have the ultimate achievement of the daiquiri-maker's art," Hemingway said. "Made a run of sixteen here one night."

"This size?"

"House record," the barman, who had been listening, said.

This recipe makes a drink—which, just to make things even more confusing, is also known as a Daiquiri No. 3—that is much less tart than the citrus bombs the Floridita was serving, and with a potency that's more likely to put you in a pleasant mood on a late-summer day than to steer you into a long, grisly night that ends with you waking up on a fishing boat drifting somewhere south of Key West.

And yes, it's frozen—say what you will, but if Hemingway was in the habit of tucking in to several rounds of these as part of his daily routine, it ain't a frou-frou drink. If you don't believe me now, mix up another 15 and we'll see what you have to say about it.

Hemingway Daiquiri (aka Papa Doble)

Ingredients

2 ounces light rum
3/4 ounce fresh-squeezed lime juice
1/2 ounce grapefruit juice
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon maraschino liqueur

Procedure

Pour all ingredients into a cocktail shaker, fill with ice, then shake and strain into a goblet or a champagne saucer filled with shaved ice.

Variations: You can skip the shaved ice, if you like, and just strain it into a chilled cocktail glass—or, you can go the easy route and just dump everything into a blender, ice and all, and zap it (but really, taking the long way around makes it kind of special). Plus, you'll find all kinds of variations in the amount of grapefruit juice, sugar and maraschino; it all depends on personal taste—use what tastes good to you.

And, since I know someone's going to leap in with a comment about the Floridita Daiquiri, this drink is awfully close: just get rid of the grapefruit juice and cut the sugar in half, and you're there. Another spectacular version of the old, reliable daiquiri.

About the author: Paul Clarke blogs about cocktails at The Cocktail Chronicles and writes regularly on spirits and cocktails for Imbibe magazine. He lives in Seattle, where he works as a writer and magazine editor.

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