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Cuba Libre (or "Free Cuba")
The Cuba Libre hails from the Old School of American Bartending, though you certainly wouldn't guess it from the drink's vapid formula - contrived out of convenience not competence. When considering all the world's cocktails, the Cuba Libre is rarely our first choice. However, it's a highball that we've all sipped and will surely sip again, so it's well worth setting the record straight: A Cuba Libre is not a Rum and Coke.
Confusion with the Cuba Libre's recipe started with the drink's earliest incarnation. Patriots aiding Cuba during the Spanish-American War - and, later, expatriates avoiding Prohibition - regularly mixed rum and Coca-Cola as a cocktail and a toast to this West Indies island. According to a 1965 deposition by Fausto Rodriguez - filed at the suggestion of a liquor company certain to be mentioned in the statement - the Cuba Libre was first mixed at a Cuban bar in August of 1900 by a member of the US Signal Corps, referred to as "Mr. X." Surprisingly, the Cuba Libre (pronounced "KOO-buh-LEE-bray") didn't strike a chord stateside until the Andrews Sisters - while performing in Trinidad during World War II - recorded a song named after the drink's more inane ingredients, rum and Coca-Cola. But with Coke a nickel a bottle and rum cheaper than whiskey, it was only a matter of time before this drink would rise to prominence.
Soon enough, as Charles H. Baker points out in his Gentlemen's Companion of 1934, the Cuba Libre "caught on everywhere throughout the South ... filtered through the North and West," aided by the ample supply of its ingredients. In The American Language, H.L. Mencken writes of an early variation of the drink: "The troglodytes of western South Carolina coined 'jump stiddy' for a mixture of Coca-Cola and denatured alcohol (usually drawn from automobile radiators); connoisseurs reputedly preferred the taste of what had been aged in Model-T Fords."
When we consider the Cuba Libre our best option at a bar, we remind ourselves that this drink was once viewed as exotic, with its dark syrup made, at that time, from cola nuts and cocaine. A few American drinkers had hoped that this pharmaceutical wonder - created by the Atlanta, Georgia, doctor John Pemberton in 1886 - would go on to compete with the great bitters of Europe. The drink, when made worth drinking, contains 2 to 3 ounces of the now far-from-exotic soda, the juice and hull of one lime, 1 ounce rum, half an ounce gin, and two dashes of bitters. If our order for this drink is ever questioned, we say nothing but recall the scene in Gary Indiana's book Gone Tomorrow when the main character reflects on ordering a Cuba Libre: "The barwoman, instantly hostile, stomped through her enclosure, chanting a litany of disgust that concluded with the words 'Cuba Libre,' spat out with incredulity. The startling performance repelled me. I hate fools." We do, too, and we tip accordingly. |
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发表于 2004-6-16 21:37
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