The Floridita cocktail, with rum, vermouth, crème de cacao, and lime juice, is perhaps the most creative of the many Daiquiri variations created by the mid-twentieth-century master of Daiquiri variations, Constantino Ribalaigua Vert of Havana’s Bar La Florida, aka the Floridita. For reasons unknown this delicious cocktail does not appear in any edition of the souvenir Floridita recipe booklets Constantino published between 1935 and 1948. It would have been lost to time if Victor “Trader Vic” Bergeron hadn’t encountered it on a 1938 visit to the Floridita, put it on the inaugural menu at Trader Vic’s, and eventually published it in his 1972 Bar Guide.
Recipe: Combine juice of one lime, 30 ml white Cuban or Puerto Rican rum, 15 ml red vermouth, 7.5 ml white crème de cacao, and one teaspoon each orange curaçao and grenadine; shake with ice and strain into a cocktail coupe. Garnish with an orange peel twist.
See also Bergeron, Victor “Trader Vic”; crème de cacao; Daiquiri; and Ribalaigua y Vert, Constante.
Bergeron, Victor J. Trader Vic’s Bartender’s Guide, Revised. New York: Doubleday, 1972.
By: Jeff Berry