19 July is the perfect opportunity to fill your glass with this rum-based cocktail and toast National Daiquiri Day. So, raise your glass and join everyone else in this celebration!
The Daiquiri is a family of cocktails whose main ingredients are rum, citrus juice (typically lime) and sugar.
The taste of this cocktail might remind you of sunshine and tropical beaches, making it hard to believe that it was probably invented by men blasting away in a small mine off the coast of Cuba.
In 1898, during the Spanish-American war, an American engineer by the name of Jennings Cox supervised a mining operation located in a village named Daiquiri. Every day after work, Cox and his employees would gather at the Venus Bar. One day, Cox decided to mix Bacardi, lime and sugar in a tall glass of ice. The new drink was named after the Daiquiri mines and soon became a staple in Havana. Eventually, shaved ice was used and sometimes lemons, or both lemons and limes.
In 1909, a US Navy medical officer, Admiral Lucius W Johnson, tried Cox’ drink and subsequently introduced it to the Army and Navy Club in Washington DC. The popularity of the drink then increased over the next few decades. The Daiquiri was the favourite drink of Ernest Hemingway and President John F Kennedy.
The drink is sometimes served frozen after being combined in and poured from a blender – eliminating the need for manual pulverisation. Drinks such as the frozen daiquiri are often commercially made in machines that produce a texture similar to that of a smoothie. It is also available in a wide variety of flavours. Another way to create a frozen daiquiri is to use frozen lemonade, which provides the required texture, sweetness and sourness – all in one.
Celebrate today by getting together with your friends and enjoying a regular or frozen Daiquiri. Remember to always drink responsibly and never to drink and drive!
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