The delicious and world renown Daiquiri was named after an iron mine and a beach in Santiago, Cuba. Legend has it that the cocktail was invented in 1905 by Jennings Cox, the general manager of the Spanish American Iron Company. Although Cox custom ordered the cocktail in a local Santiago bar called Venus, it is thought that he created the beverage himself at his home while entertaining guests. Supposedly he wanted to serve his guests a gin based cocktail, but was out of the alcohol, so on a whim he whipped up a lime, sugar, and Bacardi rum drink. It is not known if his original creation contained ice, probably unlikely considering the technology of the time, and the hot geographic region he was inhabiting. The Daiquiris he served ended up wowing his guests, then began to be served at local bars and pubs as a result. The rest is history, as we all know.
Over time and when technology allowed, the Daiquiri began to be increasingly served in pubs with cracked ice. The bartender would add the ice to a tall cocktail glass, pour one teaspoon of fine granulated white sugar over the ice, and then pour in the lime or lemon juice, followed by the Bacardi rum. In cases where Bacardi rum wasn't available, the drink was served with white rum, or on the rare occasion vodka. With regard to the amount of alcohol per drink, generally anyone making one would add in at least two to three ounces, which obviously makes the original recipe quite a strong alcoholic beverage. Decades later some of these preparation steps would evolve, and eventually the cocktail would only be mixed in a cocktail shaker, and instead of cracked ice, shaved ice would be used. Cocktail glasses were also regularly frosted in the freezer and served ice cold, as they still are today.
It wasn't until the 1940s that the drink really became popular world wide. Before that it was still kind of a fringe cocktail, that maybe you could get lucky enough to find served at a more well known and cosmopolitan establishment. What happened in the 1940s that increased the drinks popularity, is that Franklin D. Roosevelt opened up trade with Latin American through the Good Neighbor policy. Prior to that happening rum was somewhat hard to come by in the United States, but obviously all that quickly changed. With the flood of rum into US markets, naturally people began to search for local Latin American cocktail recipes to accommodate the alcohol. The Daiquiri was one of the first recipes to be discovered, and due to it's unique and delicious taste, it's popularity took off to quickly propel it to one of the world's most popular cocktails. Many people to this day know very little about the cocktail's origin.
There has been some speculation and research done to try and figure out if the Daiquiri was created before Jennings Cox came up with it. Some historians claim that their is a large amount of evidence to suggest that 18th century British sailors actually came up with the cocktail first, though even if this is true, it was Cox that made the cocktail world famous, and it's unlikely he borrowed the idea from any previous recipe. Cox's recipe also was different than the supposed earlier examples of the cocktail that were said to have contained water, sweetened lime preserves, and rum, and one could even go so far as to say both drinks are totally different in taste and preparation, as is the case. So there you have it, the history of the Daiquiri in a nutshell. The next time you order a round of Daiquiris for you and your friends, be sure to tell them about it's interesting history.
