The Spirits #15: El Presidente

~ Presidential Pardons ~ Everything and Nothing ~ ¿Donde Estas Yolanda? ~ Chekhov's Mongoose ~

~ EL PRESIDENTE ~

50ml light rum
20ml French vermouth
5-10ml grenadine

Freeze a cocktail glass. Stir everything patiently over plenty of ice and then strain into the cold glass. Garnish with an orange zest twist and/or a cherry.

Feel free to add a tot of orange liqueur if you have some and think it needs it.

Some MUSIC. Aaaaaaaaaaaand welcome to the Spirits 2021.

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I’M afraid it won’t be a long one. I had actually mentally drafted an essay that would contrast the entirely predictable apotheosis of the Trump ludicrocracy with the erosion of democratic norms under the Cuban president, Gerardo Machado y Morales, hero of the Cuban War of Independence, who governed the island 1925-1933, when it aspired to become “the Switzerland of the Americas”. Machado is El Presidente, you see - the man for whom the drink was named.

I imagined I might have time to put in a link to his biography, make some choice political comparisons with today and, more importantly, prepare playlist of Cuban songs from the era so heady, so redolent, that merely opening the link would have transported you to old Havana and dimmed the lights on 2021 for a few moments at least. We would have picked up a couple of expertly mixed El P’s at La Floridita and sipped them on the running board of a sedan as we careered up The Malecón in the warm Atlantic air, yelling, hooting, catching one another’s eye and creasing up with laughter.

Naturally, I would have embroidered this historical-mystery tour with a discussion of Dry January and my own mixed feelings thereabout; the oscillating impulses between denial and excess, self-care and self-discipline, and pondered whether the urge to drink cocktails and the urge to go for a run aren’t two sides of the same coin - the urge to transform and reframe. This would deftly, imperceptibly, mutate into a meta-discussion about cocktail writing itself. Do we, in this latest, grimmest lockdown phase, want that writing to help us escape from the political headaches of the moment - to do one small thing, but to do it with integrity and style…? Or aren’t cocktails like everything else, political, and why deny it? Why this one is literally named after a politican and it is perhaps the FINEST COCKTAIL EVER CREATED (I sometimes think).

Having held all options in the air but wisely avoided coming to any firm conclusions - aren’t you sick of conclusions? - I would have swerved the sedan (is that even a 1920s Cuban car? No time to look it up!) down Neptuno Street, pointed out a rotting fish in the gutter that looked just like a Cuban Jacob Rees-Mogg, clicked my heels and miraculously set us back down in ouw own kitchens, 2021, cold El Presidente still miraculously in hand, trumpets, congas, still playing in your ears. “GOOD LORD!” You would have said. “He managed to distill all of my conflicting emotions about drinking cocktails in 2021 into a few hundred words!”

But I am afraid the demands of the Year 2 curriculum have prevented me from doing any of this. I write this in haste at the absolute late minute. With a milllld hangover from last night’s TEST cocktail.

I know there are worse things than homeschooling, many, many worse things. But it is fairly clear that the next few weeks are probably going to involve more “DADDY! How do I send a high-five on Zoom?!” than hand-crafting beautiful cocktail posts. January is a bit of an armpit, drinking-wise, so perhaps the timing isn’t so bad. But seriously. I don’t know how I am going to begin to get anything done. Hope you guys are OK!

Suffice to say the El Presidente is a cocktail of astonishing elegance - one of my all time TOP FIVE if not, I sometimes think, my favourite. Most recipes call for orange liqueur as well as the grenadine. If you want to try it that way, maybe just a 10ml orange liqueur and cut out a little of the rum? But actually, I have it on reliable authority (i.e. some more exhaustive cocktail writer than me) that the early recipes specified grenadine OR curacao and I tend to think that if you can make a recipe simpler, you should. A little oranginess should come through all the same, by means of the orange zest twist. The El Presidente everyone! Ay caramba!

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PLAYLIST

As I said, sorry, I simply haven’t had time to do a special playlist this time. Here instead, is a fun one that I made on a French holiday once, which opens with the great Cuban singer, Orlando Contreras.

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WHAT I’M READING

A few articles, sure, but mostly Henri Troyat’s biography of Anton Chekhov which I am thoroughly enjoying. Chekhov had haemhorroids, tuberculosis a pet mongoose, half the village queuing up for free treatment (he was a doctor) and various family members making impossible demands of him - sometimes they lived ten to a room. And he still managed to write the finest short stories known to man, revolutionise the theatre and build a few hospitals in his free time. An example to us all. (NYT)

You might enjoy this - Havana then and now. (The Guardian)

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WHAT I’VE BEEN WRITING

On the home workout boom (The Observer)

On Elliott Smith’s influence on modern singer songwriters (The Sunday Times)

On George Saunder’s new book about Russian short stories (The Times)

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SHOPPING LIST

Campari, Italian vermouth, fizzy water. Any other liqueurs/amaros you have are going to be useful here.

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