Rum baba: Men don't drink daiquiris. Oh yes they do

01 July 2015 - 10:14 By Barry Clausen

In 1954 Ernest Hemingway won the Nobel prize for literature. Much of his writing dealt with the question of what it means to be a man, in specific; how he dies. A man feels pain and fear, but never shrinks from it, according to Hemingway. Ironically, he killed himself with a shotgun.Hemingway lived a life of action. As an ambulance driver, he was seriously injured during World War 1 in Italy; he covered the Spanish Civil War as a journalist and was at the Normandy landings of World War 2. He hunted big game in Africa and was an avid deep-sea fisherman. Wherever the action was Hemingway was in the thick of it.He spurned the weak, especially when it came to his drink. "Don't bother with churches, government buildings or city squares, if you want to know about a culture, spend a night in its bars," he wrote.The legend of the Hemingway Daiquiri comes from when he was living in Havana, Cuba, in the 1930s. He was passing the El Floridita bar one morning and, needing the toilet, stepped in.Barman Constantino Ribalaigua Vert was busy setting up some daiquiris, comprising a shot of rum, lime juice and sugar. Hemingway took a sip and said it wasn't bad, but told to him to double the rum and leave out the sugar.The Papa Doble - Hemingway's Double - was undrinkable, totally unbalanced, gut-searingly acidic and at the same time bland. Yet, whenever he took a break from writing, Hemingway would head down to El Floridita and smash six or even 12 of his namesake cocktail. He set the bar record at 16.Since then bartenders have improved this tribute to one of cocktailing's most celebrated personalities: the rum was pulled back a little, grapefruit juice was introduced and finally a little maraschino was added to what is today a cocktail of unparalleled history and drinkability.The Landmark, corner William Nicol and Ballyclare drives, 011-463-5081...

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