Rum

Bacardi Cocktail

Name: Bacardi Cocktail
Yield: 1 servings

Glass: Coupe

A Havana-born pink daiquiri, legally bound to Bacardi rum by a 1936 court ruling.

rum classic cuban shaken lime daiquiri-variant pre-tiki

Ingredients

fresh lime juice (0.75 oz)
grenadine (0.5 oz)
Bacardi white rum (1.5 oz)
lime twist (1)

First printed in Jacques Straub's 1914 bartending guide, and locked to a single brand by Bacardi Co. v. Barbizon-Plaza in 1936, by court ruling, this drink must be made with Bacardi rum.¹^,² The IBA official spec (white rum, lime, grenadine) is essentially a pink daiquiri, though Wayne Curtis and others note that the earliest Cuban version was a daiquiri variant without grenadine; the grenadine became standard after Prohibition.³ The pour below is slightly larger than Straub's original (~1 oz rum, 0.5 oz lime, 0.5 oz grenadine), scaled to a modern coupe.

Brand recommendations. Best: Bacardi Heritage Limited Edition (the closest to the pre-1960 Cuban profile), Liber & Co. Real grenadine or BG Reynolds grenadine. Economical: Bacardi Carta Blanca/Superior (legally required), homemade pomegranate grenadine or Rose's spiked with pomegranate molasses.

Instructions

Add fresh lime juice, grenadine, and Bacardi white rum to a cocktail shaker with ice.
Shake hard until well-chilled.
Strain into a chilled cocktail glass (coupe).
Garnish with a lime twist.

Sources

Jacques Straub, Drinks (1914), Bacardi Cocktail entry, earliest documented printed recipe; standard reference for the cocktail's pre-Prohibition spec. ↩
Bacardi Co. v. Barbizon-Plaza Hotel (New York Supreme Court, April 28, 1936), state-court ruling that a "Bacardi cocktail" must legally be made with Bacardi rum; covered widely in the trade press at the time and standardly cited in cocktail-history references. (Note: distinct from the unrelated 1940 U.S. Supreme Court case Bacardi Corp. v. Domenech, a Puerto Rico tax/trademark matter often conflated with the cocktail-naming case.) ↩
Curtis, And a Bottle of Rum (2006), Cuban-cocktail material, discusses the pre-grenadine daiquiri-variant origin in early-20th-century Havana cantinas and the post-Prohibition grenadine standardization in U.S. bar manuals. ↩