Medium
Mojito
From scurvy to Hemingway, or so we guess.
General info
- Strength
- Medium (15%)
- Alcohol
- 0.4 oz
Ingredients
2.75 oz (82.5 ml)
- Rum (I prefer light rum) 1 oz (60 ml)
- Simple Syrup ¾ oz (22.5 ml)
- Lime Halved Piece
- Mint Leaves 8 - 10 leaves
- Club Soda To fill the glass
Mixing & serving
Muddle simple syrup, lime, mint leaves together in Highball or Rock glass (not too mushy, around 4 - 5 times should be enough). Fill glass halfway with crushed ice. Add rum and stir. Top with crushed ice and soda. Control the strength by the amount of soda.
Top-shelf story
[Sound from the outside] Yarrr, did someone say rum?
Nobody said rum, but sit down, you're gettin' a lesson anyway. Mojito time.
Mojitos and the sea go way back, ye know. Some trace it all the way to 1586, to a medicinal drink made for Sir Francis Drake's crew. Legend says scurvy broke out on his ship, he found a cure in Cuba, and the result — "El Draque" — was aguardiente de caña, lime, mint, and sugarcane juice.
The name itself is contested. Some say "Mojito" derives from "mojar," Spanish for "to wet." Others claim it traces to the African word "mojo," meaning to cast a spell, brought over by enslaved people forced to labor in Cuba's sugarcane fields, given the drink's reputed medicinal power. So basically nobody's sure. Shocking.
What we do know is it started showing up in print in Cuban publications starting 1927, under names like "Cuban Mojo" and "Rum de Mojo." It didn't get called "Mojito" in writing until 1931-32, on the menu at Sloppy Joe's Bar in Havana.
Legend goes on that Hemingway drank it too, but here's the thing — a lot of the "Hemingway drank his Mojitos at La Bodeguita del Medio" legend doesn't hold up. That bar didn't even open till the 1940s and didn't take its current name until 1950 — after Hemingway's supposed glory days there.