It’s National Daiquiri Day. You know, some people like to look down their noses at the Daiquiri, usually for being too mainstream or sweet. Some even consider it a foo-foo drink. But let me tell you something. Ernest Hemingway drank them. That’s right. He drank the hell out of them. Although, it must be said, he drank a suitably super-macho version called the Papa Doble. First, he dispensed with the sugar and doubled the rum. Two limes, half a grapefruit, six drops of maraschino, then, yes, churned up in a blender. Hemingway’s personal record was 16 of these patiently, relentlessly sunk while sitting on a bar stool at the La Floridita in Havana. That adds up to over 1.75 liters of rum, which is nothing to sneer at. Try one, I think you’ll like it. Here’s how Hem described a properly-made Papa Doble in his novel Islands in the Stream: “So well beaten as it is, it looks like the sea where the wave falls away from the bow of a ship when she is doing thirty knots.”
