When considering a review, you must consider the source.
Given that the world has never been so drenched in opinions, you certainly already know this. I’ve heard, for example, that chocolate milk is the best liquid ever invented, but this is from my 6 year old nephew, who’s never even had Champagne much less a Negroni, and in the meantime has the type of palate that demands the crust off of bread. Anonymized reviews can be useful in aggregate—the Ask the Audience Lifeline, if you will—but for individual opinions, it’s important to consider the pedigree.
So when you hear that the “Hotel Nacional Special… is one of the three finest Bacardi drinks known to science,” you might take such a thing with guarded optimism. Though when you hear the source is no less than Charles Baker Jr.—a man whose entire raison d’etre was to ferret out the most delicious things to eat and drink across this big beautiful planet of ours—those guards begin to come down. Baker was a writer and gourmand of the kind that doesn’t really exist anymore, but whose closest modern equivalent is probably Anthony Bourdain: A small inheritance allowed him to sail around the world, taking meticulous notes on the best food and drink he experienced, and when the inheritance ran out, he got himself hired as a publicist to the shipline, in order to continue on with same. The book that ultimately came from these travels—The Gentleman’s Companion: Being an Exotic Drinking Book, or Around the World with Jigger, Beaker, and Flask, published in 1939—is an invaluable resource, both in the breadth of its scope and the confidence of its judgement.
Most cocktail books of the era simply listed recipes without personal opinion, while Baker can’t get two pages into his introduction before weighing in on the state of global cocktails as he sees it: “By the time we [traveled around the world] the bald-faced conclusions were plain as the nose on our face—much of that welter of mixed things with fancy names were the egotistically-titled, ill-advised conceptions of low-browed mixers who either had no access to sound spirits, or if they did have, had so annealed their taste buds with past noxious cups that they were forevermore incapable of judicious authority.” After these shots across the bow and a few (pretty sound) rules for mixing drinks, he commences with his list of cocktails, ones that, presumably, he did think were worth a damn.
This is the context into which the Hotel Nacional Special appears, a bright-eyed and exuberant combination of rum, pineapple, lime, and apricot liqueur. Baker credits it to a hotel manager named Wil Taylor, while an earlier book gives paternity (somewhat more credibly) to a veteran bartender named Eddie Woelke, but both agree that it was the house drink of the posh Hotel Nacional, the most luxurious resort in Havana in the early 1930s. Making one, it’s easy to see why Baker found it so pleasing. The cocktail elaborates on the Daiquiri—one of the great drinks of the world, and Baker’s other two “finest Bacardi drinks known to science” (with the other being the Daisy de Santiago)—but adds charm by way of tropical pineapple and ambrosial apricot, which segue into each other so well it’s difficult to tell where each flavor begins and ends.
The result is a refreshing rum drink that’s both fruity and, with the right selection and quantity of rum, deeply resonant. It is disarming and lovely, accessible without being boring, and easy without being basic. Is it one of the three best rum drinks in the world? At the end of the day that’s just a review, but at least one person thought so.
Hotel Nacional Special
2 oz. rum
0.5 oz. lime juice
0.5 oz. apricot liqueur
0.25 oz. simple syrup (or 1 tsp. sugar)
1 oz. pineapple juice
Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker with ice, and shake good and hard for eight to 10 seconds. Strain up into a coupe or cocktail glass. The pineapple juice will have created a bit of foam on the top of the drink—garnish this foam with a few drops of Angostura Bitters, if you like, or otherwise just a lime wheel and be done with it.
NOTES ON INGREDIENTS
Smith & Cross
Rum: Rum is the big question—the cocktail lives or dies with the rum. Like many rum drinks that lean on fruit flavors for character, the biggest danger here is just being boring. And as a general rule, if your rum drink is boring, just add more rum. Strength, in these cases, is a balancing ingredient.
Many talented bartenders call for the full two ounces of white rum, and if you choose this, go with something with character, usually a blend like Probitas or Plantation 3 Star. Baker himself noted that you should use an aged rum, and in my tests I have to agree—specifically the aged rums from Jamaica, like Smith & Cross or Dr. Bird, come with the bold, funky character that shines out of fruit flavors like this.
Apricot Liqueur: You have to get a good one—bad (or even good but old) apricot liqueur can get medicinal in a hurry, which translates to the final drink in a way that isn’t ideal. I have both worked with and recommend the Giffard Abricot du Roussillon and the Rothman and Winter Orchard Apricot. Luxardo also makes one that I admit I still haven’t had, though their products tend to be excellent.
Simple Syrup/Sugar: Pineapples are a bit of a moving target in terms of sweetness, so you may have pineapple juice that doesn’t need this extra bit, but most pineapple juice will. Simple syrup is just mixing equal parts sugar and hot water and stirring for about 15 seconds until the sugar dissolves. You can do this with just plain sugar too, but make sure to add it to the pineapple juice and lime juice before you add the alcohol or ice, and stir until the sugar dissolves (maybe 30 to 120 seconds, depending on how cold those ingredients are). Sugar doesn’t like to dissolve in alcohol, and it really doesn’t like to dissolve in anything cold.
Pineapple Juice: Cans of pineapple are possible here, but fresh is better. Cans paradoxically have a bolder but less complex “pineapple” flavor, which works against that whole trying-to-not-be-boring thing above. But it totally works and is still worth making, if that’s all you have, just pay extra attention to the type and quantity of rum.
Authors
Jason O’Bryan
Jason O’Bryan has set up a professional life at the intersection of writing and cocktails. He’s been managing cocktail bars for the last twelve years, first in Boston and now in San Diego, where he’s…
Read More
Dining and Cooking