Mastering simplicity: Planas Daiquiri

Cocktails are quite magical, aren’t they? They have a way of bringing people together, sparking delightful conversations and debates, bringing passion to the dullest of evenings. 

 

One of the things we deeply love is a good cocktail. There is an art to cocktail-making. Even for the simplest of cocktails, there is a “savoir-faire”, a set of little details that don’t seem important at first. However, ignore them, and the result is just ‘not the same’.

 

Mastering the art of cocktail-making (also called ‘Liquid Arts’) is not about the fancy instruments you use nor the wide variety of ingredients you add, it is all about balance. Finding that perfect combination of ingredients and making the flavors balance each other. And most of the time, simple is best.

 

One of our favorite cocktails is the Daiquiri. The king of simplicity, the Daiquiri is one of the best examples of strong, sweet and sour. But like with other cocktails, and even more with this one, balance is key. For this particular cocktail, we use Diplomático Planas, elegant, rich and surprisingly intense for a white rum. Aged up for 6 years, the complex charcoal filtration process carried out prior to bottling it gives it its crystal clear appearance and smooth finish. 

The challenge here is to retain Planas’ fruity flavors with a silky texture as well as making a delicious, clean, fresh, classic Daiquiri.

 

To achieve that, all we need is three ingredients and the perfect ratio. No fuss. 

 

Daiquiri

Ingredients:

50 ml Planas

20 ml Lime juice

15 ml Sugar syrup

Ice

 

Learn how to prepare it here:

 

Like many other cocktails, the origin of the Daiquiri knows many versions, and some do take artistic liberties when telling them. Here is the most well-known story though. 1898, shortly after the Spanish-American War, in a little village called Daiquiri, 14 miles east of Santiago de Cuba in southeastern Cuba, an American mining engineer, Jennings Stockton Cox, unintentionally created the Daiquiri.

 

The story says that he ran out of gin while entertaining guests at his home and the only alternative he could encounter at the village market was local rum. In order to soften it for his guests, he decided to mix it with some lime juice and sugar, and just like that, the Daiquiri was born. Probably a slight oversimplification of the facts, but you get the idea. Now let’s be honest, mixing rum with lime and sugar wasn’t anything new in Cuba, but Jennings S. Cox was the first to give the cocktail a name.

 

The Daiquiri became really popular around 1920, and many variations of the drink have been invented since then. One of them, nicknamed ‘El Floridita’, was known to be Hemingway’s favorite, named after one of his regular hangouts in Havana, a bar at the end of Calle Obispo, a short walk from the Hotel Ambos Mundos where he stayed at from 1932 to 1939. Now, that is saying something. 

 

So here it is, an all-time classic. Simple, elegant, and that will continue to intrigue us for a long time to come.