Mojito
Havana's mint and lime highball, pressed not pulverized
Mint leaves pressed just hard enough to let go of their oil, lime, sugar, white rum and a long pour of soda over ice: the Mojito is a cool room built inside a glass. It belongs to Havana, where it moved from a workaday rum, lime and mint refresher into the printed menus of the 1920s and 1930s bars that welcomed thirsty visitors from a dry United States. Made well, it smells like a garden after rain and drinks like a breeze off the Malecon. Made badly, it tastes of shredded lawn, which is why the pressing matters.
Cuba's mint and lime highball: white rum, fresh lime, sugar or syrup and gently pressed mint, built over ice and topped with soda water.
Ingredients
- 2 oz / 60 ml White rum (Cuban-style light rum)
- 1 oz / 30 ml Lime juice, fresh
- 0.75 oz / 22 ml (or 2 tsp superfine sugar) Simple syrup (1:1)
- 8 to 10 leaves, plus a sprig for garnish Fresh mint leaves (spearmint)Pick the leaves from the stem; keep one bushy top sprig aside for the garnish.
- top, about 2 oz / 60 ml Soda water, chilled
- Technique
- Muddled
- Glass
- Highball
- Ice
- Cubed
- Prep
- 4 min · Intermediate
- Garnish
- A slapped mint sprig standing beside the straw; a lime wheel is optional.
- Approximate strength
- about 12% ABV in the glass (Estimate. Ethanol from 60 ml white rum at 40% is 24 ml; rum, lime and syrup total about 112 ml; a 60 ml soda top and roughly 20% dilution from stirring on ice bring the glass to about 205 ml, so about 12% ABV, lower if the soda pour is generous.)
- Allergens
- None listed
Method
Put the mint leaves in a highball glass, add the lime juice and simple syrup (or sugar), and press the leaves gently with a muddler six to eight times, turning the muddler rather than grinding, until the glass smells strongly of mint. Do not tear the leaves into pieces; bruised mint is fragrant, shredded mint is bitter.15s
Press the leaves the way you would press a hand, firm and brief. The scent is the signal to stop.
Add the rum and stir briefly with a barspoon to dissolve any sugar and lift the mint through the liquid.10s
Rum over mint and lime: the warm part of the island meets the green part.
Fill the glass to the top with cubed ice (or crushed ice for a colder, softer drink) and stir for 10 to 15 seconds so the drink chills and the mint is distributed from bottom to top rather than sitting at the base.15s
Ice to the rim, and a slow stir so the leaves climb the glass like ivy.
Top with about 2 oz (60 ml) chilled soda water and give one gentle lift with the barspoon to integrate without losing the sparkle. Add more ice if the level has dropped.
Soda last, and only a lift of the spoon: the fizz is the breeze, do not stir it away.
Slap the reserved mint sprig once against the back of your hand to release its aroma and stand it in the glass beside a straw, so the mint is at the nose with every sip. Add a lime wheel if you like.
A sprig by the straw, so the garden arrives before the drink does.
Flavor notes
Cool spearmint and lime peel on the nose. The first sip is bright and lightly sweet with the rum's clean cane note underneath; the soda keeps it long and lively and the mint lingers on the finish. The balance here is slightly tart; raise the syrup to 1 oz (30 ml) for a softer, more Havana-tourist-bar sweetness.
Variations
- Sloppy Joe's 1931-32 Mojito: 1 tsp sugar, juice of half a lemon or lime, 2 oz Bacardi rum, seltzer, cracked ice, stirred in a highball, mint sprig; also listed under gin.
- Mojo de Ron (after Lasa 1929): 2 oz Bacardi rum, 0.75 oz lime, 1 tsp sugar, mint, ice, seltzer, with the Criollo version using less lime and a dash of bitters.
- Mojito Royale: Same build topped with dry sparkling wine instead of soda.
- La Bodeguita House Style: Mint muddled with sugar and lime juice, soda added before the rum, few cubes, rum poured last. source
Substitutions
- White rum: London dry gin · Sloppy Joe's 1931-32 manual listed the Mojito under gin as well as rum; juniper and mint are old friends.
- White rum: Lightly aged (gold) rum · Adds a little vanilla and body; the drink reads warmer and less crisp.
- Simple syrup: 2 tsp superfine or demerara sugar muddled with the mint · The traditional Cuban build; sugar crystals help bruise the mint. Stir well so no sugar settles.
- Soda water: Dry sparkling wine · Turns the drink into a Mojito Royale, richer and slightly stronger.
- Lime juice: Half a lime cut in wedges and muddled with the mint and sugar · Closer to the Havana street build and adds peel oil; use a lighter hand on the mint so the lime pith is not ground.
Without alcohol
Press 8 to 10 mint leaves with 1 oz (30 ml) lime juice and 0.75 oz (22 ml) simple syrup, add 1 oz (30 ml) of a zero-proof white-spirit alternative or 1 oz (30 ml) chilled green tea, fill with ice and top with 3 oz (90 ml) soda water. Known in Cuba and beyond as a Virgin Mojito or Nojito; it keeps all of the aroma and most of the refreshment.
Batching
The Mojito is built to order; muddled mint turns dark and bitter within an hour and soda goes flat, so do not batch the finished drink. For 8 guests, prepare a base of 16 oz (480 ml) white rum, 8 oz (240 ml) fresh lime juice and 6 oz (180 ml) simple syrup, refrigerated and used within 24 hours. To serve, press 8 to 10 mint leaves in each glass with 0.5 oz (15 ml) of the base, add the remaining 3.25 oz (97 ml) of base, fill with ice, stir, top with soda and garnish. A mint-infused syrup (steep 1 cup mint leaves in 2 cups warm 1:1 syrup for 20 minutes, strain, chill) can replace the muddling when speed matters, with a fresh sprig for aroma.
Origin and sources
The Mojito is a Cuban drink of the early twentieth century, at heart a rum Collins with mint. The printed trail runs through Havana: a Mojo Criollo appears in a 1927 Cuban booklet, El Arte de Hacer un Cocktail y Algo Mas; Juan A. Lasa's 1929 Libro de Cocktail gives a Mojo de Ron of Bacardi rum, lime, sugar, ice, seltzer and mint, with a gin version alongside; a 1931 cookbook, Cuban Cookery, prints a Rum Cocktail (Cuban mojo); and the name Mojito itself first appears in Sloppy Joe's Bar's souvenir cocktail manual for the 1931 to 1932 season, listed in both the Bacardi rum and the gin sections, with a teaspoon of sugar, half a lemon, rum, seltzer and cracked ice in a highball. Sloppy Joe's was one of the Havana bars Americans visited during Prohibition, which is how the drink crossed the water. It faded after mid-century and returned in the 1980s through Cuban emigre bartenders in Miami, and went on to become one of the most ordered cocktails in American bars. Later recipes muddle the mint with sugar and lime, which the Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails regards as the better drink.
Contested: Three stories attach to the Mojito that the record does not support. First, El Draque: Cuban folklore says sailors with Francis Drake took a mix of aguardiente, lime, sugar and mint against fever in 1586, and that the Mojito is the Draque with rum in place of cane aguardiente; a 1940 account by Villoch, cited by Difford's, links the two by name. A similar Draquecito was prescribed against cholera in mid-nineteenth-century Cuba, and the Oxford Companion allows that it could have inspired the drink, but nothing from Drake's era documents it. Second, La Bodeguita del Medio: the Havana bar calls itself the home of the Mojito and displays a handwritten note attributed to Ernest Hemingway favoring its Mojito over all others; Difford's Guide notes that none of Hemingway's books or known letters mention the bar or the drink, and the bar's own listing gives no founding date. Third, the name: one etymology gives mojar, to wet; another the word mojo, as in the Cuban citrus and garlic seasoning; neither is settled. A further unsupported claim credits a bartender at La Concha beach near Havana around 1910. Difford's also reports a rival theory that American visitors brought the Mint Julep and Cubans answered with rum and soda. This record treats the Cuban origin as documented by the 1927 to 1932 printed sources and everything earlier as folklore.
- Mojito cocktail history, Difford's Guide · secondary source, retrieved 2026-10-11
- Mojito (The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails), Oxford University Press, hosted by Spirits and Distilling · secondary source, retrieved 2026-10-11
- La Bodeguita del Medio, Havana (bar listing), Difford's Guide · secondary source, retrieved 2026-10-11
Fact check: verified · Credit: The Fabled Pour editorial team