The Falcon Daiquiri

The Falcon Daiquiri is built on Falconet Midnight, our blend of 8 to 15 year dark rums, and it took BTI's 2021 Platinum First Place Cocktail award. An aged Daiquiri is a rounder, oakier drink than the silver-rum classic, and this is the version we put our name to.

Ingredients:

• 2 oz Bombarda Falconet Midnight
• 1 oz fresh lime juice
• 3/4 oz demerara sugar syrup (2 parts demerara sugar to 1 part hot water)
• 1/2 oz triple sec
• Lime twist, to garnish

Method of Attack:

1. Combine the rum, lime juice, demerara syrup and triple sec in a shaker with plenty of ice.
2. Shake hard — fifteen seconds, until the tin is too cold to hold comfortably.
3. Double strain into a chilled coupe.
4. Garnish with a lime twist. Serve straight up, no ice.

Frozen variation:

Spread two tablespoons of sugar in a thin layer on a small plate. Run a lime wedge around the rim of a glass and dip it in the sugar. Blend the same measures with a cup of ice on the highest setting for 15 to 20 seconds until smooth, then pour into the prepared glass.

About This Recipe:

The Daiquiri is named for a beach near Santiago de Cuba, where an American mining engineer called Jennings Cox is credited with formalising it around 1898 — rum, lime and sugar, which sailors and dockworkers had been drinking in some form for two centuries before he wrote it down.

It remains the drink bartenders use to judge a rum, because there is nothing else in the glass. No cola, no cream, no mint. Whatever the rum tastes like is what the Daiquiri tastes like.

Why this rum:

Three ingredients means the spirit is fully exposed, and that is exactly where a sweetened rum fails. If the bottle arrives with sugar already in it, the drink lands flat and slightly syrupy and no adjustment to the lime will rescue it.

Falconet Midnight is aged 8 to 15 years with no added sugar, no caramel colorant and no chill filtration. It pays to use a dark rum you would happily drink neat — and the not-chill-filtered texture is a large part of what gives this Daiquiri its body.

Battle Notes:

Demerara syrup rather than white. The molasses in the sugar meets the molasses in the rum, and that is most of the difference between a good aged Daiquiri and a great one.

For the three-ingredient brown sugar version, see Captain's Cutlass. Full breakdown in our guide to the best rum for a Daiquiri.