The Daiquiri

The Daiquiri was supposedly invented in 1898 in the eponymous mining town of Daiquiri on the southeastern tip of Cuba by an American mining engineer named Jennings Cox who lived and worked in Cuba after the Spanish-American War. Cox hosting a cocktail party ran out of gin, and since rum was plentiful, it proved a convenient substitute in a punch he was serving.

It was introduced in the United States by William A. Chanler, a US congressman who purchased the Santiago iron mines in 1902, allegedly introducing the daiquiri to clubs in New York that year.

Originally the drink was served in a tall glass packed with cracked ice. A teaspoon of sugar was poured over the ice and the juice of one or two limes was squeezed over the sugar. Two or three ounces of white rum completed the mixture. The glass was then frosted by stirring with a long handled spoon. Later the daiquiri evolved to be mixed in a shaker with the same ingredients but with shaved ice. After a thorough shaking, it was poured into a chilled coupe glass.

Consumption of the drink remained localized until 1909, when Rear Admiral Lucius W. Johnson, a US Navy medical officer, tried Cox’s drink. Johnson subsequently introduced it to the Army and Navy Club in Washington D.C., and drinkers of the daiquiri increased over the space of a few decades. It was one of the favorite drinks of writer Ernest

Hemingway and US President John F. Kennedy.

The drink became popular in the 1940’s. World War 2 rationing made whiskey and vodka hard to come by, yet rum was easily obtainable owing to US President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy, which opened up trade and travel relations with Latin America, Cuba and the Caribbean. The Good Neighbor Policy, also known as the Pan-American program, helped make Latin America fashionable. Consequently, rum based drinks (once frowned upon as being the choice of sailors and down-and-outs), also became fashionable, and the daiquiri saw a tremendous rise in popularity in the US.

The basic recipe for a daiquiri is also similar to the grog British sailors drank aboard ship from the 1780s as a means of preventing scurvy. By 1795 the Royal Navy daily grog ration contained rum, water, ¾ ounce of lemon or lime juice, and 2 ounces of sugar. This was a common drink across the Caribbean, and as soon as ice became available this was included instead of water.

Variations of the daiquiri started to pop up, the Hemingway Daiquiri which essentially added grapefruit juice and maraschino cherry liqueur, the Avocado daiquiri which added half an avocado, the Banana daiquiri which added a half a banana. None more famous than the Frozen Daiquiri. Yes, this blended smoothie frozen alcoholic beverage forever changed the status of the daiquiri to a cheaper, less glorious status. No drink has suffered more abuse than the Daiquiri. In the century plus since its inception, the granddaddy of rum cocktails has gone from the pride of Havana to an unloved extra on the back of a Senor Frog's table tent. Even today, as the craft cocktail movement reaches full tilt, most people too often associate the Daiquiri with neon colored adult slushies, the stuff of spring break blackouts and mind splitting hangovers.

But in its purest form, the Daiquiri is simple and sublime, a delicate blend of rum’s sweetness with the raw freshness of sugar and lime juice. Whole lives have been dedicated to balancing those three elements. Each ingredient should be of the highest quality goes without saying, though even the daiquiri can throw you a curve. Choose an overly sweet rum or use too much sugar, and you’re left sipping liquid candy; overdo the citrus, and the cocktail drowns in a puckering pool of acidity. Balance living on a razor’s edge is key to a perfect Daiquiri.

* what was popular in 1902

The Wright brothers achieved the first manned flight with a motorized airplane, in Kitty Hawk in 1903.
US President William McKinley is assassinated at the Pan-American Exposition.
An Earthquake on the San Andreas Fault destroys much of San Francisco, killing at least three thousand people in 1906.
America gained control over the Philippines in 1902, after the Philippine-American War.
Rock being moved to construct the Panama Canal.
Admiral Togo victory at the Battle of Tsushima in 1905, part of the Russo-Japanese War, leading to Japanese victory and their establishment as a great power, while Russia’s defeat eventually led to the 1905 Revolution.

The decade saw the widespread application of the internal combustion engine including mass production of the automobile, as well as the introduction of the typewriter. First wave feminism saw progress, with universities being opened for women in Japan, Bulgaria, Cuba, Russia, and Peru. In 1906, Finland granted women the right to vote. The First Moroccan and Bosnian crisis led to worsened tensions in Europe that would ultimately lead to the First World War in the next decade.

*Famous People in 1900s

Pablo Picasso
Winston Churchill
Claude Monet
Ty Cobb
Cy Young

Tons of Modern artists and sports athletes in baseball, boxing and cricket.

* The first huge success of American Cinema, as well as the largest achievement to this point, was the 1903 film The Great Train Robbery directed by Edwin S. Porter.

*Electric Theatre, the first movie theater in the United States, opens in Los Angeles on April 2, 1902.

*New Haven, Connecticut Louis Lassen of Louis’ Lunch makes the first modern day hamburger sandwich. According to the family legend, one day in 1900 a local businessman dashed into the small New Haven lunch wagon and pleaded for a lunch to go. The customer, Gary Widmore, exclaimed “Louie! I’m in a rush, slap a meat puck between two planks and step on it!”.