In an era of bow-tied, mustachioed bartenders debating the merits and uses of house-made shrubs, molecular mixology and food-flavored liquors, sometimes it’s refreshing to return to the basics. With the advent of warmer weather, taste buds may start to crave the classic simplicity of a cocktail laden not with esoteric herbs and bitters but with recollections of ocean breezes, sandy beaches and suave early American writers. And what better cocktail than one born from the insatiable desires of Americans escaping their Prohibitionist shores in search of alcohol?
Born of rum, sugar, lime, mint and soda, the basic mojito has anything but a basic history. The origins of the mojito remain clouded not so much in mystery but in, perhaps, drunken fugue. Some cite Richard Drake, a fellow privateer of Sir Francis Drake’s, as having created the first version of the mojito using easily accessible ingredients indigenous to the Cuban landscape. Whether he used lime, sugar and mint to help settle his captain’s stomach, cure his fellow pirates of scurvy or to mask the noxious, barely potable aguardiente used instead of the less widely available rum — one may never know. But El Draque, Drake’s new concoction, was born.
Others brush aside the pirate backstory and credit early sugarcane plantation slaves in Cuba as the first to add sugar and lime to mask the hot liquor available to them. Both versions bear merit, but whatever the early origins of the mojito, it was not until the 1920s that it found footing in the cocktail world.
Eager to escape the stifling liquor laws of the United States, tourists fled to the freer Cuban isle to gamble and imbibe. The mojito saw the addition of soda to appeal to the American tastes, becoming the cocktail we know today. But Ernest Hemingway truly popularized the drink, especially at his local bar of choice, the Bodeguita. American tourists eager to follow the Hemingway trail flocked to the bar, where bartenders today still pour mojitos by the thousands.
On a smaller scale, the bartenders of Aji Latin American Restaurant in Boulder serve their specialty blends year-round, regularly garnering the status of “best mojito in Boulder.” There’s no cutting corners here — only the most aromatic, best tasting mint, grown at proprietor Jerry Manning’s Three Leaf Farms, joins the freshest limes cut to order and houseinfused rums to create their famous mojitos.
Even with the choicest ingredients and the best of intentions, Taylor Roberts, Aji manager and head of the bar program, feels a mojito can still fall short. But he credits his bar staff with truly making their cocktail stand out. “It’s all in how you shake it,” he explains. After extensive muddling, the ingredients are shaken to further release the mint essence and reduce the size of the leaves, creating a cloudy drink heavy on the flavor profiles.
The real challenge is not in the creation of the cocktail, though, but in how to give it appeal through the seasons. Fruity tropical drinks are not typically ordered with a foot of snow outside. “It definitely keeps me on my toes,” laughs Roberts. The bar staff ’s creativity is given a chance to shine with spicier, warmer infused rums such as ginger-clove and cinnamon, bringing a little Christmas to their mojito.
But with warmer summer climates, look forward to mango-jalapeno, pineapple-plantain and blueberry-lemon mojitos joining the classic on the menu. Sit out on the expansive patio, close your eyes, take in the rhumba beats and just maybe, for a moment, take a little Cuban holiday in the foothills of Boulder.
