August 19, 2006

Fidel Loses His Grip -- on Rum

While Fidel Castro lay indisposed, one of El Maximo Lider's maximum enemies -- the Bacardi company -- scored a small victory against the Cuban dictatorship. The Puerto Rican rum behemoth won a ruling from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office canceling the Castro regime's registration of Havana Club, a brand of rum expropriated by the bearded ones after the revolution. Years ago, Bacardi bought the rights to the name from the exiled owners of the brand, and for a decade has been trying to have that deal enforced by U.S. courts.

In the meantime, Cuba's Havana Club has become a popular brand in Europe. Fidel went into business with the French drinks giant Pernod-Ricard to market Havana Club everywhere but the U.S. (where, like cigars from the island, Cuban rum is non grata). Bacardi threw no small amount of money around Washington, and for a while its efforts were championed by Tom DeLay, who was House Majority Leader at the time. Supporting Bacardi was a threefer for Mr. DeLay -- campaign cash and the chance to stick it to both Fidel and the French. The Bacardi money, however, proved costly: It was among the contributions cited in the Texas indictment that lost him the leadership.

Now comes the PTO's ruling that it isn't about to protect Fidel's profits from intellectual property he nationalized. To solidify its own claim to the Havana Club brand in the States, Bacardi rushed to market this week some Havana-style rum the company has had aging in Puerto Rico, waiting for just such an opportunity. But what to make with that Havana Club rum? Not -- at least for now -- the Cuba Libre, a drink knowingly nicknamed the "White Lie."

Instead, let's try a drink popular on the island in the 1920s, when "Have one in Havana" was "the winter slogan of the wealthy." What were they having? According to "When It's Cocktail Time in Cuba," a 1928 travelogue by the improbably named Basil Woon, they were drowning in Daiquiris and putting away pineapple juice concoctions such as the Mary Pickford. But the most elegant drink by far was El Presidente, made of rum, dry vermouth, orange curaçao and grenadine. "It is the aristocrat of cocktails," swoons Woon, "and is the one preferred by the better class of Cuban." El Presidente -- with its familial resemblance to the Martini and the Manhattan -- is indeed an aristocrat, a drink to be enjoyed in a white dinner jacket at the casino, not a rum punch for drinking in sandy swim togs at the beach.

For years, El Presidente reigned in Cuba. In February 1930, the Chicago Tribune proclaimed from Havana that "The chief output of this Paris of the western hemisphere this winter is Presidente cocktails." Disciples of the drink returned to the States, where it was soon popular enough to be a test of a mixer's skill. "Bartender Louis Meyer has his chest 'way out this week," the Washington Post nightlife columnist Chanticleer reported in 1937. The barkeep at the Carlton Hotel had "produced an improved El Presidente cocktail. His boast is that it is the best rum drink obtainable, not excepting the West Indies."

Nowadays, you'd be hard-pressed to find a bartender who knows how to make a Presidente at all. Which isn't to say it is a forgotten cocktail. Rick Marin, the "toxic bachelor" who penned the dysphoric dating reminiscence "Cad" a couple of years ago, describes pouring plenty of Presidentes as part of his wooing technique.

There are competing claims of paternity for El Presidente. The cocktail has been attributed to a bartender named "Eddie" Woelke, who worked everywhere from the old Knickerbocker Hotel in New York to the Plaza Athénée in Paris and back to New York at the Hotel Biltmore. Come Prohibition, he hoofed it to Havana, where he found gigs at the city's best boîtes. It is claimed that Woelke devised El Presidente in the mid-'20s and named it after the new Cuban jefe, Gerard Machado. But there are reasons for doubt. When Woon finds Woelke behind the bar at the Sevilla Hotel in 1928, he regales us with many details of the mixer's life and art. And yet Woon doesn't mention the Presidente in his discussion of Woelke's craft. Instead, he praises Eddie's Mint Julep, "a drink to cause any Southern gentleman to yelp the rebel yell."

It is a previous president who gets the honors in the other creation story for El Presidente -- Mario García Menocal. Owner of a sugar plantation, Menocal had been educated in the States and was later a hero of the war against Spain. The Cornell Alumni News noted in 1906 that Menocal ('88) had "taken a prominent part in the recent Cuban revolution." The Cornell alum had been promoted to general after he crept under a hut full of Spaniards and "placed a charge of dynamite under it." Menocal was elected presidente in 1912 and, re-elected in 1916, stayed in office until 1921.

It has been claimed that Menocal invented the drink himself, but more likely is the story that the cocktail was created at the "Vista Alegre" -- the name of both a Havana café and a tony club in the suburbs of Santiago de Cuba.

The classic El Presidente is made with two parts light rum to one part each dry (white) vermouth and orange curaçao, with a dash of grenadine. Some versions of the recipe call for more vermouth; some drop the curaçao. Sloppy Joe's, one of the most popular tourist bars in Havana's heyday, featured a Special Cocktail No. 1 that was a Presidente with a half-ounce of fresh lime juice added. It's not bad -- but not as good as the original. The only room I have found for improvement on the original recipe is to increase the rum quotient slightly. Shake or stir it with ice and strain it into a stemmed cocktail glass. The liquid should have a burnished golden color; if it looks pink, you used too much grenadine.

Write to Mr. Felten at eric.felten@wsj.com¹