Frozen Daiquiri

White rum, lime, and sugar blended with ice — Ribalaigua at La Floridita (Havana, 1817), Hemingway's Papa Doble (no sugar, double rum) the most celebrated request.

The Frozen Daiquiri is a blended ice variation on Cuba's most exported cocktail, perfected at La Floridita bar in Havana during the 1930s and 1940s by head bartender Constantino Ribalaigua Vert, who ran the establishment from 1914 until his death in 1952. La Floridita, located at the corner of Obispo and Monserrate Streets in Old Havana, had been established in 1817 and was known as La Piña de Plata (The Silver Pineapple) before Ribalaigua's tenure transformed it into El Floridita and ultimately La Floridita. Ribalaigua adapted the classic three-ingredient Daiquiri for electric blending — then a relatively new bar technology — creating a smooth, frozen variation whose texture was entirely distinct from the shaken original. His signature innovation was precise control of the blending time and the balance of lime acid, sugar sweetness, and ice dilution that produced consistent, silky results. Ernest Hemingway, who lived at the Finca Vigía in San Francisco de Paula outside Havana from 1939 to 1960, was Ribalaigua's most celebrated regular, requesting his Daiquiri without sugar and with double rum — an order the bar called the Hemingway Daiquiri or Papa Doble. Ribalaigua created several Daiquiri variations for Hemingway, and the association between the writer and the bar became one of the most commercially significant celebrity-cocktail relationships in history.