Cuban rum, mint, lime, ice, soda. The Mojito is such a simple drink. It was born in Cuba, and it still one of the most popular drinks in Cuba. In fact, it is the national cocktail of Cuba. However, it is nearly impossible to find a Mojito made in the classic Cuban style outside of Cuba.

Is it the high cost of ice that prompted Cuban bartenders to add only a few cubes to each drink? British pub landlords are notorious for using only three or four small cubes in their gin and tonics for just this reason. Yet, if you order a Mojito in some of London’s best bars today, the bartender will pack a tall glass with crushed ice.

But the ice is not the primary difference of Cuban Mojitos. There are dozens of varieties of mint. The dominant type for Cuban Mojitos is a variety known locally as hierba buena: a red-stemmed mint with the scientific name mentha suaveolens, which is commonly known as apple mint, woolly mint, or Cuban mint. More vegetal than peppermint or spearmint in flavour, Cuban mint has a refreshing less pungent taste and aroma profile.

Another ingredient that seems to be limited to Cuba is Angostura bitters floated on top of the drink. Bitters were born in tropical heat, to keep people healthy in tropical heat. Perhaps the flavour is only appropriate when the heat and humidity are strong enough to drive everyone to seek shade and rum drinks.

The Mojito is a truly Cuban drink, mingling African and European cultures into a spellbinding, invigorating concoction. In West Africa, a mojo is a cloth bag filled with magic spices and articles crafted to cast a spell. The word “mojito” is the diminutive of this loan-word and means “little spell.” Mojitos have cast a spell on the world for centuries in one liquid form or another. There are a few other theories about the origin of the drinks name. One holds that the name comes from a Cuban seasoning mix called mojo. However, this sauce originated in the Canary Islands and was traditionally made in Cuba with sour oranges, not limes. Another theory is that the name is a contraction of a diminuation of the word mojado meaning “wet”, which would have become mojadito, and then mojito. This is also rather unlikely, though it is broadly accepted.

The Mojito is the direct descendant of a libation favoured by pirates and privateers, especially one in particular. Legend has it that one of the earliest concoctions in cocktail history was invented in honor of a sixteenth-century British privateer, known best for his exploits along the Spanish Main. A hero in the eyes of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth I, Sir Francis Drake was the scourge of the Spanish Crown, who dubbed him “El Draque” [the Dragon]. During the 1570s and 1580s, Drake and his crew, which included French sailors and cimarrones (sometimes also known as Maroons, African slaves who escaped from sugar plantations) took up privateering as a profession. This was a “legitimized” form of piracy sanctioned by the Queen herself. From the Caribbean and the South American coast up to western Canada, Drake plundered Spanish galleons laden with Peruvian gold and claimed portions of the North American coastline in the name of Britain.

Some stories claim that pirate Richard Drake invented a drink, which he named after his boss El Draque. The basic concoction included readily available ingredients from a pirate’s point of view: sugar, key limes (Citrus aurantifolia, a highly acid, highly aromatic Caribbean variety), aguardiente de caña and hierba buena.

In his landmark history of Cuban rum, author Fernando Campoamor detailed that El Draque was given this potion as a medicinal to settle his stomach, affected by the tropical climate and diet. Even after El Draque’s death in 1596, Drakes or Draquecitos were taken as a refreshing break to the day. Cuban author Rámon de Palma wrote in his 1838 story El Cólera en Habana: “I take every day at eleven o’clock a Draquecito and it does me perfectly.”

When did the Draquecito evolve into the Mojito? According to author Ciro Bianchi Ross and Cuban historian Miguel Bonera, the Mojito Batido first appeared in print around 1910 and was served at La Concha in Havana. By that time, commercial ice had been imported and then produced in the city for nearly a hundred years. Havana’s cantineros relished serving icy cold drinks. Muddling the fragrant mint, adding crystal clear ice and topping it with soda water transformed the El Draque into a refreshment deserving a name of special merit.

Many of Havana’s finest hotels and bars embraced the Mojito in the first decades of the twentieth century. But it was the hands of Angel Martinez at La Bodeguita del Medio and celebrity promotion by novelist Ernest Hemingway shaped the drink into an international legend.

It is important to remember that the Mojito is an aromatized Rum Collins or Rickey. Many bartenders try to rusticate the recipe by muddling lime in the drink rather than using fresh lime juice or try to substitute brown sugar for white. These create interesting drinks but not Mojitos. The best Cuban versions always use key lime juice and white castor sugar. The use of castor sugar is important as it acts as an abrasive on the mint releasing its fragrant oils without it being necessary to totally pulverize it as it so often the case. Also cracked rock ice is most appropriate not crushed ice, the dilution comes from the addition of soda. Crushed ice merely pulverizes the mint creating a green soup.

Mojito
50ml Havana Club Añejo 3 Años
25ml Fresh squeezed key lime juice
3 teaspoons Castor sugar
6-8 Cuban mint leaves and two complete stems of Cuban mint

Method
First add the mint leaves and the sugar to a highball glass. Then add the fresh lime juice and stir to dissolve and release the mint aromas. Then add the rum. At this point if possible leave the drink to infuse for a few minutes, perhaps while you make other drinks. Finally fill the glass with cracked rock ice and a splash of soda. Gently use a barspoon to mix the ingredients. Garnish with 2 stems of freshly cut mint, thus allowing the
mints juice to run into the drink. Slap the mint to release its fragrance and serve with straws cut to the height of the garnish.

[This article was originally published in German in 2009 in Mixology Magazine.]