Rum

Daiquiri No. 1 (Floridita)

Name: Daiquiri No. 1 (Floridita)
Yield: 1 servings

Glass: Coupe

Constante Ribalaigua's house Daiquirí at El Floridita, the canonical shaken rum, lime, and sugar template that fixed the modern spec.

rum cuban classic pre-tiki shaken lime daiquiri-variant

Ingredients

fresh lime juice (0.75 oz)
simple syrup (0.5 oz)
white Cuban-style rum (2 oz)
cracked ice (1 cup)
lime wheel (1)

Constante Ribalaigua, who took over El Floridita in 1918 and reformulated the drink across the next two decades, codified the Daiquirí into a numbered house catalog.¹ No. 1 is the standard: light Cuban rum, fresh lime, sugar, shaken hard with cracked ice and strained into a chilled coupe. The 1935 El Bar la Florida Cocktails book lists the spec at roughly 2 oz Bacardi Carta Blanca, half a lime, and a teaspoon of sugar, a refinement of Cox's 1898 mining-village built drink into the shaken bar form that became canon.²^,³ The drink's elegance is in the technique: Constante shook so vigorously the resulting cocktail was nearly slushy, with a fine ice-shard texture across the surface.¹

Brand recommendations. Best: Havana Club 3 Año (where legal) or Caña Brava for the white Cuban-style rum, fresh-squeezed lime, fine cane sugar dissolved into a 1:1 simple syrup. Economical: Bacardi Carta Blanca (the historical canonical rum) or Don Q Cristal, standard supermarket fine sugar.

Instructions

In a shaker combine fresh lime juice, simple syrup, and white Cuban-style rum.
Add cracked ice and shake hard until very cold, about .
Strain into a chilled coupe.
Garnish with a lime wheel.

Sources

Berry, Potions of the Caribbean (2014), Floridita / Ribalaigua chapter, Berry's history of Constante's 1918 takeover, the numbered Daiquirí catalog, and his signature hard-shake technique that produced the slushy ice-shard surface. ↩
El Bar la Florida Cocktails (1935), the Floridita's own house cocktail book, listing the canonical Daiquirí No. 1 spec at ~2 oz Bacardi Carta Blanca, half a lime, and a teaspoon of sugar. ↩
Cate & Cate, Smuggler's Cove (2016), Daiquirí No. 1 entry (p. 168), traces the Cox 1898 Daiquirí built-drink origin through the Ribalaigua shaken-bar refinement that became the modern canon. ↩