Title: El Presidente
Categories: Alcohol, Beverages, Caribbean
Yield: 1 Servings
1 1/2 oz White rum
3/4 oz Orange curacao
3/4 oz French (dry) vermouth
1 ds Grenadine
I always use Noilly Prat vermouth (the best dry vermouth, with the
exception of Vya, which is three times the price), Bols Orange
Curacao and homemade grenadine, but my rums sometimes vary.
Typically, I'll just use Bacardi, as the drink was originally made
with Cuban rum and Puerto Rican rum is about the closest we can come
to that.
But if I'm looking for a richer, more buttery drink, I'll use a
Jamaican white rum like Myers Platinum, which adds a deeper base
note to the drink. I've also mixed it before with Mount Gay Eclipse,
a golden Barbados rum with a really deep, resonant sweetness. I
enjoyed the drink, but the Mount Gay really took over the flavor
profile, and the vermouth was pretty much lost in the mix.
In Esquire Drinks, David Wondrich gives credit for the El
Presidente's creation to Eddie Woelke, an American who tended bar
at the Jockey Club in Havana during Prohibition and who named the
drink for Gerardo Machado, who ruled Cuba from 1925 to 1933.
This drink has a lot going for it: it's easy to mix, doesn't
require any perishable ingredients (so you don't have to keep
lemons or limes on hand all the time, just in case you get a
craving for one) and while it has a suave, buttery taste, it packs
a lot of horsepower into a tiny cocktail glass. The 1949 edition
of Esquire's Handbook for Hosts calls it "an elixir for jaded
gullets" and I think that's a pretty fair assessment.
I really like these in the summer: they have a bright, slightly sweet
flavor that seems to give a warm evening a slightly festive touch,
even if its a Wednesday and its not even really summer yet and I
have to be in the office the next day.
From: Paul Clarke in The Cocktail Chronicles: Navigating the
Cocktail Renaissance with Jigger, Shaker & Glass
