Hemmingway called the Mojito his favorite drink, but the now-popular drink you can buy pre-made in bottles at your local liquor store has been around long before Ernest Hemmingway described it. Drinkswap tells us…
Mojito is a traditional Cuban cocktail which became popular in the United States during the late 1980s, and has recently seen a resurgence in popularity.
But it seems the drink goes back even further, perhaps beyond Cuba, where Hemmingway encountered it, to Africa.
The mojito is a tasty cocktail with a questionable history. The first mojito drinks were reportedly mixed by the pirate Sir Richard Drake, supposedly made from a precursor to modern day rum in the 1800s. Still others claim that the first mojito was served by Sir Francis Drake in the 1500s. No matter who created the mojito, it is the Cubans who perfected this minty, lime and rum concoction, making it the perfect summer drink. The African slaves in the Caribbean provided the word from which the name hails. The name Mojito is derived from an African word-mojo-a word used by slaves who worked the sugar cane fields to describe placing a spell on someone. True to its name, this refreshing summer drink is sure to place a pleasant spell on anyone you serve it to.
Either way, Simon Phillips, my bartender extraordinaire from my book Fall Into You, loves them. It’s his favorite drink of all time, even way back in 1989, long before most of us ever discovered the refreshingly minty, lime drink. But that doesn’t surprise me in the least, especially since he first ran into the beverage in Miami, FL. The man is all about perfection, precision, and finding great new drinks to mix, and as soon as he was home, he was perfecting his recipe to try out on adventurous guests at the bar where he works.
Yet, Simon brags about how he makes a Mojito the “right way” in chapter 1 of my book, but then later, he takes the lazy way out to make his own Mojitos by using mint infused simple syrup rather than cane sugar and fresh mint. There is a very good reason why he takes the easy way out. He just wants to get drunk.
Do you have a favorite Mojito recipe?
And some with simple sugar to make it easier on you so you can drink a whole lot of Mojitos like Simon does in times of need: From Yummly.
Or, you can simply buy it pre-made in a bottle like I often do.
