Periodista

A Cuban rum cocktail dedicated to journalists, combining rum with triple sec, apricot brandy, and lime in a complex, layered sipper.

The Periodista — periodista means journalist in Spanish — is a cocktail born in Havana during the golden age of the Cuban bar, when the city was simultaneously one of the most politically turbulent places in the Western Hemisphere and one of its most cosmopolitan drinking destinations. From the 1920s through the 1950s, Havana attracted foreign correspondents from American and European newspapers covering Cuba's revolving governments, the rise of organized crime's casino operations, and the social upheavals that preceded the 1959 Revolution. The press corps gathered at the bars of the Hotel Nacional, the Floridita, the Sevilla, and dozens of neighborhood cantinas, and like most good drinking cultures, they eventually had a cocktail named in their collective honor. The Periodista combines Cuban rum with apricot brandy, orange liqueur, and lime juice — a formula that reflects the cosmopolitan nature of 1950s Havana, where European liqueurs sat behind the bar alongside the island's own rum production. The stone fruit element of the apricot brandy gives the drink an unusual middle note between the rum's sweetness and the citrus acid, creating something distinctly more complex than a standard Daiquiri variation. The drink largely disappeared after the Revolution disrupted Havana's international bar culture, but it has been recovered through the broader tiki and tropical cocktail revival and now appears as a worthy representative of pre-Revolution Cuban mixology.