Daiquiri

Recipe: Daiquiri (serves one)

• 2 oz. golden rum
• 1 oz. lime juice
• 2 tsp superfine sugar
• 2 tsp water
• twist of lime peel

Add sugar and liquid ingredients to ice-filled cocktail shaker. Shake vigorously. Strain into glass and garnish with lime twist.

When we think of a tropical cocktail, we tend to think of rum, almost always combined with something sweet, and often with a refreshing kick of lime juice. The daiquiri is the classic Cuban recipe that combines these three elements in the simplest possible way.

It’s traditional to make the daiquiri with white rum, but we prefer ours with a lightly aged golden rum (we used Mount Gay Eclipse).

As with many simple cocktails, you can spin off from the daiquiri in a lot of directions. You’ve probably seen ice-blended daiquiris and strawberry daiquiris. Using Cointreau in place of the sugar yields the Cuban Sidecar. From there, if you want to go for more deeply flavored dark rum, try the Myers’s Sidecar.