El Presidente is a Cuban cocktail combining rum, vermouth, and dashes of curaçao and grenadine. Introduced in the mid-1910s, it rapidly achieved widespread popularity both in its homeland and abroad. The drink, complex and lightly sweet, was particularly popular among the Cubans themselves, as was demonstrated by Gerardo Machado, the country’s president, when he served it at a 1928 state banquet in honor of his American counterpart, Calvin Coolidge (Coolidge, although personally opposed to Prohibition, adhered to the national policy and refused the drink). See Prohibition and Temperance in America.
The Presidente first appears in print in the 1915 Manual del cantinero published in Havana by a bartender at the Hotel Inglaterra, John B. Escalante, a Spaniard who had worked for years in New York. It is, however, quite possible that it was actually invented by Constantino Ribalaigua of the Floridita bar: it was at least directly attributed to him in a 1937 article about him, an article he repeatedly reprinted in the bar’s promotional cocktail booklets, and he was not known to be a vain or boastful man (the claim published that same year that it was invented by a Chicago bartender in 1912 cannot be corroborated—or disproved). See
The Presidente made it out of Cuba in the late 1920s, turning up in international bar guides and American speakeasies. In the next decade, it would appear occasionally in Europe and surprisingly often in the United States—perhaps not a first-rank cocktail like the Sidecar, but not far behind. See Sidecar. Unfortunately, in its journey from Cuba, one key piece of information regarding its composition was lost: the vermouth in the original was a white, semi-sweet French “vermouth de Chambery.” See vermouth. Most of the recipes published for it, however, called simply for “French”—that is, dry—vermouth (this is perhaps due to the fact that Bacardi rum and Noilly Prat vermouth shared the same importer, and the drink was advertised with those brands). See Bacardi and Noilly Prat. The resulting drink is awkwardly balanced, driving conscientious mixologists to overemphasize the curaçao or the grenadine or switch to a heavier red vermouth, losing in the process the delicacy that was a large part of the Presidente’s original appeal. In any case, its popularity did not outlast the 1950s, although recent years have seen a cautious El Presidente revival.
Recipe: 45 ml each white Cuban rum and sweet, white vermouth and 5 ml each orange curaçao and grenadine. Stir, strain, up. Garnish with orange twist and cherry.
Cuddy, Jack. “Cuban’s [sic] Cocktail King Tells Cuddy Daiquiri Recipe.” Rome (NY) Sentinel, March 5, 1937.
Escalante, John B. Manual del cantinero. Havana: Imprenta Moderna, 1915.
Lane, French. “They Pay the Freight.” Chicago Tribune, March 11, 1937, 19.
By: David Wondrich