This is the platonic rum sour — white rum brightened by fresh lime and just enough sugar to round the edge, shaken hard until it arrives ice-cold, pale and faintly frothed, straight up in a coupe. Nothing hides here: the lime gives it snap, the syrup softens the bite, and the rum carries the whole drink, so it lives or dies on balance and the quality of the bottle.
Garnish: Lime Wheel
Shaken · Coupe · Up
add
Combine the white rum, fresh lime juice, and simple syrup in a shaker.
shake
Add ice and shake hard until well chilled and diluted.
strain
Double-strain into a chilled coupe, served straight up.
garnish
Garnish with a lime wheel if desired.
The drink takes its name from Daiquirí, a mining town outside Santiago de Cuba, and the story most often told credits an American mining engineer, Jennings Cox, with mixing the first one there around 1898 — though no single inventor is universally recognised. In Havana, Constante Ribalaigua Vert polished the formula at La Floridita and made it famous, and William Chanler is also named among those who helped spread it. By 1930 Harry Craddock's Savoy Cocktail Book was printing the same rum, citrus and sugar build made with Bacardi, and the IBA now lists it as an official cocktail calling for white Cuban rum.