cocktail
A cocktail is a mixed drink, usually alcoholic beverage, alcoholic. Most commonly, a cocktail is a combination of one or more liquor, spirits mixed with other ingredients, such as juices, flavored syrups, tonic water, Shrub (drink), shrubs, and ...
made of rum, orange
curaçao
Curaçao, officially the Country of Curaçao, is a constituent island country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located in the southern Caribbean Sea (specifically the Dutch Caribbean region), about north of Venezuela.
Curaçao includ ...
, vermouth, and grenadine. The original recipe calls for blanc vermouth.
Some believe it is the only bona fide classic cocktail that is supposed to use harder to find blanc vermouth (
Chambéry
Chambéry (, , ; Franco-Provençal, Arpitan: ''Chambèri'') is the Prefectures in France, prefecture and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of the Savoie Departments of France, department in the southeastern ...
vermouth
Vermouth (, ) is an Italian aromatized wine, aromatized, fortified wine, flavored with various Botany, botanicals (roots, Bark (botany), barks, flowers, seeds, Herb, herbs, and Spice, spices) and sometimes Food coloring, colored. The modern ve ...
) and is frequently mismade with dry vermouth. While variations are made using other orange liqueurs than curaçao, the drink is traditionally meant to be red in color, so blue curaçao should not be used. The red comes from red curaçao, or when paler colors are used, from the
grenadine
Grenadine () is a nonalcoholic bar syrup commonly used as a cocktail ingredient, distinguished by its sweetness, mild flavor, and red color. Popular in mixed drinks, grenadine syrup was traditionally made from pomegranate, but today is most p ...
.
History
The El Presidente earned its acclaim in
Havana
Havana (; ) is the capital and largest city of Cuba. The heart of La Habana Province, Havana is the country's main port and commercial center.American Prohibition. It quickly became the preferred drink of the Cuban upper class.
There are two rival stories of who the cocktail is named after. One is
Mario García Menocal
Aurelio Mario Gabriel Francisco García Menocal y Deop (December 17, 1866 – September 7, 1941) was the 3rd President of Cuba, serving from 1913 to 1921. His term as president saw Cuba's participation in the Allies in World War I.
Early li ...
, president from 1913 to 1921. The other is
Gerardo Machado
Gerardo Machado y Morales (28 September 1869 – 29 March 1939) was a general of the Cuban War of Independence and President of Cuba from 1925 to 1933.
Machado was elected president in 1924 as the leader of the Liberal Party, a moderate reform ...
, who was a general and also president from 1925 to 1933.
There are also multiple claims as to the invention of the cocktail. One story is that it was American bartender ''Eddie Woelke'', who named it after Gen. Menocal after moving to Havana. Another claim is that it was invented as early as 1915 in Cuba, 5 years before Woelke set foot on the Malecón in 1920. This premise if true is even further debated, as either being invented at the ''Vista Alegre'' (a Havana establishment frequented by Americans), or by President Menocal himself.
Similar cocktails
President Machado gave
Pan American Airways
Pan American World Airways, originally founded as Pan American Airways and more commonly known as Pan Am, was an airline that was the principal and largest international air carrier and unofficial overseas flag carrier of the United States for ...
(Pan Am) exclusive rights to fly the Florida–Havana route. This may be the reason that Pan Am served a variation of ''El Presidente'', known as the ''clipper cocktail'', on their larger planes. It consisted of only gold rum, vermouth, and grenadine.
Sources
* Curtis, Wayne (May. 1, 2006) El Presidente . ''Lost Magazine''.
* Eric Felten, ''How's Your Drink?: Cocktails, Culture, and the Art of Drinking Well'', pp. 105–108, Agate Publishing, 2009 {{ISBN, 1572846127.