Daiquiri
Rum, lime and sugar, shaken until the tin frosts
There is nowhere to hide in a Daiquiri. Three ingredients, one shake, and the glass tells you exactly what the rum is and whether the limes were cut this morning. It came out of the iron hills of eastern Cuba, where American engineers mixed their rum ration with the citrus and sugar at hand, and it grew up in Havana at the hands of a bartender who shook thousands of them a day. Served up and ice cold, pale as a winter moon, it is the drink by which bartenders judge each other.
The Cuban rum sour: white rum, fresh lime juice and simple syrup, shaken hard and served straight up in a chilled coupe.
Ingredients
- 2 oz / 60 ml White rum
- 1 oz / 30 ml Lime juice, freshly squeezed
- 0.75 oz / 22 ml Simple syrup (1:1)
- Technique
- Shaken
- Glass
- Coupe
- Ice
- Served Up
- Prep
- 3 min · Easy
- Garnish
- Thin lime wheel floated on the surface, or none.
- Approximate strength
- about 17% ABV in the glass (Estimate. Ethanol from 60 ml rum at 40% is 24 ml in a 112 ml pre-dilution volume; assumed 25 percent dilution from a hard shake gives about 140 ml and roughly 17% ABV. An overproof or 45% rum raises it to about 19%.)
- Allergens
- None listed
Method
Chill a coupe in the freezer or fill it with ice and water while you build the drink.
A cold glass is half the recipe.
Measure the rum, lime juice and simple syrup into the small tin of a shaker.
Three pours, and the lime's scent already announces the drink.
Fill the large tin with cubed ice, seal the tins and shake hard for 10 to 12 seconds, until the outside is frosted and too cold to hold comfortably. A hard shake aerates the drink and gives it a fine white foam.12s
Shake like you mean it; the frost on the tin is the only clock you need.
Empty the coupe of its ice water. Double strain through a Hawthorne and a fine mesh strainer into the chilled coupe so no ice shards reach the glass.
Fine strain, and the surface settles into a pale, still pool.
Garnish with a thin lime wheel floated on the surface, or serve clean with no garnish. Drink it while it is cold.
A lime wheel on a white moon. Do not let it wait.
Flavor notes
Lime zest and a faint sugar-cane sweetness on the nose. Bright, tart and cold on the palate with the rum's light grassiness in the middle; the foam softens the acidity for a moment, then the finish is clean and dry. Temperature is everything: at its best in the first two minutes.
Variations
- Hemingway Daiquiri (Papa Doble): 2 oz white rum, 0.75 oz lime, 0.5 oz grapefruit juice, 0.5 oz maraschino liqueur, no sugar in the original; most modern bars add 0.25 oz simple syrup; shaken or blended.
- Daiquiri No. 3: 2 oz light rum, 0.5 oz lime, 0.4 oz rich syrup, 0.25 oz grapefruit, 1 barspoon maraschino, served over ice; Floridita, circa 1915. source
- Frozen Daiquiri: 2 oz rum, 1 oz lime, 0.75 oz simple syrup blended with 1 cup crushed ice until smooth; Floridita style.
- Mulata Daiquiri: 2 oz aged rum, 0.75 oz lime, 0.5 oz dark creme de cacao, 0.25 oz simple syrup.
Substitutions
- Lime and syrup at 1 oz and 0.75 oz: 0.75 oz (22 ml) lime and 0.75 oz (22 ml) simple syrup · The rounder, slightly sweeter build that Punch prints; better for guests who find the headline spec sharp.
- Lime and syrup at 1 oz and 0.75 oz: 0.75 oz (22 ml) lime and 0.5 oz (15 ml) simple syrup · The drier 2:0.75:0.5 school; suits delicate rums and drinkers who want the spirit forward.
- White rum: Lightly aged rum (1 to 3 years) · Adds vanilla and a fuller body; this is the rum style the Floridita numbered Daiquiris used.
- Simple syrup: Rich demerara syrup, 0.5 oz (15 ml) · A touch of molasses that reads as older and warmer; reduce the volume because 2:1 syrup is sweeter.
- White rum: Rhum agricole blanc · Grassy and vegetal; a French Caribbean cousin called the Ti Punch when built with lime and cane syrup instead.
Without alcohol
Shake 2 oz (60 ml) of a zero-proof rum alternative, 1 oz (30 ml) lime juice, 0.5 oz (15 ml) simple syrup and 0.25 oz (7.5 ml) pineapple juice for body, double strain into a chilled coupe and float a lime wheel. The pineapple stands in for the weight the rum would give.
Batching
For 8 drinks combine 16 oz (480 ml) white rum and 6 oz (180 ml) simple syrup in a bottle; keeps refrigerated for a week. On the day add 8 oz (240 ml) fresh lime juice no more than four hours before service and keep the bottle cold. Shake each 3.75 oz (110 ml) portion with ice to order; a Daiquiri must be shaken individually for its foam and chill, so do not pre-dilute. For a party punch alternative, add 6 oz (180 ml) cold water to the full batch and serve over ice in rocks glasses.
Origin and sources
After the 1898 Spanish-American War, American companies began working the iron-ore mines near the village of Daiquiri in Cuba's Sierra Maestra. Jennings Stockton Cox, an American mining engineer there, is credited with the drink. The main witness is Francesco Domenico Pagliuchi, a fellow engineer and correspondent, who wrote to the Havana newspaper El Pais in 1948 recalling a drink Cox made at the mines from Bacardi rum, citrus, sugar and ice, shaken; Cox called it a rum sour and Pagliuchi says he suggested the name Daiquiri. Basil Woon's 1928 book places the naming at the Venus bar in Santiago. Admiral Lucius Johnson visited Cox in 1909 and is credited with carrying the drink to the Army and Navy Club in Washington, which still marks the connection with a plaque. Jacques Straub's 1914 Drinks is the earliest cocktail book to list it. In Havana, Constante Ribalaigua Vert presided over the bar at La Florida (later Floridita) from about 1914 until his death in 1952, bought the bar in 1918, and built the numbered Daiquiris, including the grapefruit and maraschino Daiquiri No. 3 of about 1915. The frozen version is said to begin with Emilio Gonzalez at Havana's Plaza Hotel, but Ribalaigua made it famous once the Waring blender arrived. Ernest Hemingway drank frozen Daiquiris there through the 1930s and 1940s; doubles became Papa Dobles, and the Hemingway Special with grapefruit was made for him.
Contested: Rum, lime and sugar were drunk together in the Caribbean long before Cox, and Difford's links the Daiquiri to the older Cuban canchanchara; Cox's contribution is the name and the shaken, iced form, not the combination. The Pagliuchi letter is a recollection written fifty years after the event, and the Woon account differs on where the naming happened, so the 1898 date and the mine location are popularly told rather than documented at the time. Harry E. Stout is sometimes named alongside Cox as co-creator; this record found no primary support for him. The frozen Daiquiri's inventor is contested between Gonzalez and Ribalaigua. The headline spec here follows the modern craft ratio of 2 oz rum, 1 oz lime and 0.75 oz simple syrup (1:1), chosen because it keeps the drink tart and rum-led; the 2 oz, 0.75 oz, 0.75 oz build that Punch prints is sweeter and rounder and is given as a substitution. The 2:0.75:0.5 school (less lime, less sugar) suits lighter rums and is noted in substitutions too.
- Daiquiri cocktail history: creation story, Difford's Guide · secondary source, retrieved 2026-10-11
- Daiquiri: up, on the rocks or frozen, Difford's Guide · secondary source, retrieved 2026-10-11
- Daiquiri No. 3 recipe, Difford's Guide · secondary source, retrieved 2026-10-11
- Daiquiri recipe, Punch · secondary source, retrieved 2026-10-11
Fact check: verified · Credit: The Fabled Pour editorial team