Recipes
First Rain Daiquiri
Rain on hot tin, lime peel, a warm afternoon: First Rain was made for a daiquiri, and a daiquiri needs nothing else.
Ingredients
- 45 mL First Rain
- 30 mL fresh lime juice
- 15 mL sugar syrup (1:1)
Method
- Shake hard with ice.
- Double strain into a chilled coupe. No garnish needed; a lime wheel if you like.
Where it comes from
The daiquiri is named after a beach and an iron mine near Santiago de Cuba. The usual story credits Jennings Cox, an American engineer running the mine in the late 1890s, who mixed the local rum with lime and sugar when the gin ran out and called the drink after the place. It went north with the US Navy, and in the 1930s Constantino Ribalaigua at El Floridita in Havana turned it into the drink bartenders still argue about: shaken hard, served very cold, nothing hiding the spirit.
That is the point of it. Three ingredients and no garnish to speak of, so the rum has nowhere to hide. A heavy, sweetened rum makes a heavy drink; a clean column-still cane spirit with lime peel and green fruit of its own makes the drink it was always meant to be. It is why First Rain is bottled clear, rested briefly and left without added sugar.
A note from Alex: “I have made a lot of cocktails and tasted a lot more. The daiquiri is my favourite cocktail of all time: three ingredients, a minute to make, and nowhere for the spirit to hide.”