Cocktail · Medium strength

Mojito

White rum, mint, and lime — a Havana porch in a glass.

How to order it: Muddle gently; bruised mint, not pulverized. Top with soda.

The story

Cuba's most famous export after cigars has roots that may stretch to the sixteenth century, when a rough mixture of aguardiente, lime, mint, and sugar — later called El Draque, after the English privateer Francis Drake — was taken as medicine. Refined rum eventually replaced the firewater, and Havana made the drink its own. Hemingway's endorsement, famously scrawled on the wall of La Bodeguita del Medio, is widely suspected to be a forgery — fitting, for a drink that has always blurred legend and history. The Mojito endures because it solves a hard problem elegantly: how to make rum taste like the climate it comes from, all green shade and salt air.

Modern variations

The Mojito cast a long shadow. These pours carry the torch:

Adjacent pours