Siesta

Blanco tequila, Campari, grapefruit, and lime — Katie Stipe's c. 2006 riff on the Hemingway Daiquiri, Campari and naringin creating double bitterness.

The Siesta was created by bartender Katie Stipe in New York City around 2006 as a tequila riff on the Hemingway Daiquiri — the rum-grapefruit-maraschino variation on the standard Daiquiri that La Floridita head bartender Constantino Ribalaigua Vert developed for Ernest Hemingway in Havana, made without sugar and with double rum. Stipe's version applies the Hemingway Daiquiri's bitter-citrus-spirit structure to blanco tequila with Campari, fresh grapefruit juice, fresh lime juice, and simple syrup, producing a cocktail that draws on both the Italian aperitivo tradition and the Mexican agave tradition simultaneously. Campari's bitter citrus and the grapefruit's naringin bitterness create a double-bitter framework against which the tequila's agave earthiness and the lime's acid provide structural contrast. The Siesta became one of the most widely cited examples of the early 21st-century craft cocktail movement's systematic exploration of tequila as a versatile cocktail base equivalent to gin and whiskey, and it demonstrated specifically that Campari — whose use in tequila cocktails was unusual before the Oaxacan Old Fashioned and Siesta's emergence — was a natural modifier for agave spirits.