Hemingway Daiquiri – Classic Recipe & History

History Of The Hemingway Daiquiri

The Hemingway Daiquiri is not the Papa Doble. The two are often considered the same, and the Hemingway daiquiri is also called a Papa Doble. The Papa Doble was a very different cocktail that most people would not like. The Hemingway Daiquiri as we know it today started to appear around the 1960s. One of its earliest references is from the publication ” Cuba, Paloma de Vuelo Popular” by Nestor Teran. Teran refers to the cocktail as the Hemingway Special at Bar Floridita. If Hemingway had this cocktail, it was probably much later in his life (he passed in 1961), and residents knew this was not the Papa Doble but a different cocktail entirely. The 1972 Trader Vic’s Bartender’s Guide calls this drink the Floridita Special. Victor Bergeron’s cocktail information is often very much on point. He didn’t just know tiki but traditional cocktails and Caribbean cocktails too. As a bartender from the 1930s to 1970s, his knowledge of cocktails is trustworthy. The earliest Hemingway Daiquiri recipes are shaken with crushed ice and dirty poured into a glass like the Papa Doble, but the Trader Vic recipe is blended into a slushy cocktail. Thus taking on its current form.

By the 1990s, every publication I found simultaneously calls the Papa Doble the Hemingway Daiquiri. The list is too numerous to cite, so the example I will mention is the 1998 book “The Hemingway Cookbook” by Craig Boreth. Boreth implies that the Hemingway Daiquiri is also called the Papa Doble, Wild Daiquiri, and Daiquiri Special. A lot of names for one drink.

Recipe Resources

Papa Doble References

• January 1949 Life Magazine
• July 04, 1961 – Diario Las Americas

Hemingway Daiquiri References

• 1964 Cuba, Paloma de Vuelo Popular – Teran
• 1972 Trader Vic’s Bartender’s Guide – Bergeron
• 1998 The Hemingway Cookbook – Boreth