Tropical

Hotel Nacional

The Daiquiri's holiday cousin

Ingredients

45mlLight RumEl Dorado 3 Year recommended
15mlApricot LiqueurRothman & Winter recommended
30mlPineapple Juice
15mlLime Juicefreshly squeezed
7.5mlSemi-Rich Simple Syrup

Make it well

Shake

Directions

1. Add the rum, apricot liqueur, pineapple juice, lime juice and syrup to your shaking tin with ice. 2. Shake hard for 10-12 seconds, it needs the dilution to bring all that fruit sweetness into balance. 3. Double strain into a chilled coupe. 4. Garnish with a lime wheel.

Taste

On the nose it's tropical straight away, pineapple first and that soft apricot sweetness coming up behind it. On tasting, this is sweeter and fruitier than a Daiquiri and it isn't pretending otherwise, though the lime does enough work to stop it going sticky. The rum stays underneath with a light grassy funk to it. Silky from a hard shake. Sunshine in a glass, basically.

Origin

Named for the Hotel Nacional de Cuba, which opened in Havana in 1930, right at the height of Prohibition-driven American tourism to the island. Exactly who first mixed it is disputed between three American bartenders who worked the hotel's bar in its early years: Wil P. Taylor, Eddie Woelke and Fred Kaufman, all of whom have been credited at various points. Charles H. Baker Jr., writing in his well-travelled 1939 book The Gentleman's Companion, names Taylor specifically as the creator. The drink's first known appearance in print, though, is slightly earlier, in the 1934 book Bar La Florida Cocktails. Whoever gets the credit, it became one of the hotel's signature pours during its Prohibition-era heyday.

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