The Spirits #24: The Mojito

~ Muddling ~ The Semiotics of the Mojito in 'I May Destroy You' ~ Fine then I'll Take It ~ So Fresh, So Clean ~ My Tornado Hell Revisited ~

~ THE MOJITO ~

Crushed ice (see notes)
Six or so mint leaves
50ml light rum
25ml lime juice
15ml golden sugar syrup
Dash Angostura bitters (optional)
<100ml fizzy water

Fill a tall glass with crushed ice and bung it in the freezer while you make the drink. Place the mint and sugar syrup in the bottom of the shaker and lightly muddle (not too hard or you’ll draw out the bitter notes in the mint). Now introduce the other ingredients and just a couple of bits of ice and shake. Pour everything into the tall glass, top with fizzy water and ‘churn’ - i.e. take a spoon (ideally a long barspoon) and slosh everything around a bit, up and down. Serve with a straw and garnish with a posy of mint in the middle of the glass.

Some Mojito pointers:

1) CRUSHED ICE, EH? Well, you can make a Mojito without and it’s still going to be OK, but if you want to do it properly you’ll want crushed. If you have one of those fancy fridges that makes it, well done you. Otherwise you can buy it at the supermarket. Or make your own. Empty a tray of ice cubes into a clean tea towel, twist up the fabric, and cudgel it on a hard surface until it’s smashed into smithereens. Incidentally the word “smithereens” comes from the Gaelic smidirini, little pieces; as does the word “galore”, from go leor, to sufficiency. You can make quite a nice Mojito with Irish whiskey if you fancy.

2) Angostura is not canonical but a mere dash sort of knits the whole thing together, I find.

3) Careful with that fizzy water! I mean: don’t use too much! Millions of Mojitos are drowned each year in tragic, senseless, topping-up accidents. Over-large glassware is usually to blame.

4) Rum-wise, I made this three times, first with the matchless Flor de Cana 4-year-old, then with Five Rivers Indian Spiced White Rum, which is flavoured with cardamon, cassia, coriander, clove and ginger. Both were extremely good. So too was the dark rum version I made next with Appleton 8.

5) Tony Conigliaro - the bartender behind 69 Colebrooke Row, Bar Termini and others - makes a very good non-alcoholic Mojito with apple juice in place of the rum.

…I could go on but I won’t. Here is some minty-fresh MUSIC instead… and no I don’t mind if you dance.

You will find instructions for making sugar syrup, grenadine, ice, etc here and my 10 RULES FOR MAKING COCKTAILS here. I have also assembled some bottle recommendations for a cabinet here - and this here is the full archive of weekly specials. Do please share the Spirits with anyone who might like it - and feel free to tag me with your creations on Instagram ou même Twitter!

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ONCE in a while, a piece of art comes along that makes you reorganise your categories and reassess your opinions before returning you to the world afresh. I can’t think of many that have done so as effectively these last 12 months as I May Destroy You, Michaela Coel’s razor-sharp BBC series. It completely upended the way I think about the Mojito.

I’m talking about the scene in the tenth episode, The Cause, the Cure, in which one of the main storylines turns on the precise cocktail I have in my hand right now.

When we first meet Kwame (Paapa Essiedu), a close friend of our protagonist, Arabella (Coel), he is a confident, liberated gay man enjoying all the fruits of the hyper-connected 21st century Metropolis. However, after a series of bruising encounters that confuse his prior notions of consent, he is left confused and depressed, unsure whether he’s victim or perpetrator or both. He starts using Grindr like it’s Tetris, compulsively and almost mindlessly, in an attempt to numb himself with anonymous hedonism. A hook up with someone called “Fun_Now97” seems to promise more of the same. But when he arrives at the flat, he finds an actual person waiting there: Tyrone (Gershwyn Eustache Jnr).

Tyrone doesn’t want the perfunctory sex that Kwame wants. He wants to make Kwame a Mojito. What’s more, he seems to want Kwame to like the Mojito he has made: “What’s the matter, does it need more sugar?” (Mojitos often do). Kwame is disconcerted, annoyed, makes it clear he is there for “dick” and not sitting around drinking cocktails - which is fair enough, maybe. But Tyrone persists: “Is having a Mojito weirder than instantly fucking?”

He asks Kwame to sit with him. Eventually he does. When it comes to it, what Kwame wants is a hug. Before long, Tyrone has prepared him dinner. And by the end of the series, they are a couple.

I’m sure one could mount a critique of the heteronormativity of this storyline… so the gay character finds happiness in a domestic set up? How nice. And actually, maybe Tyrone is at fault here: has Kwame consented to intimacy? But then again: when do you ever see one man - let alone a black man - making food for another man on screen not in a cooking competition? Not often. And I like the way that the Mojito serves as a sort of midway point between hedonism and genuine connection in this scene. That Mojito is a magic potion, a mood-altering substance. I also like the way it comes from a guy whose screen name is “Fun_Now97”. The Mojito is a very 1997 drink. (Attention to detail!) And as I sliced those limes and bruised that mint for the Mojito pictured above, I was transported back to that very era. If you ever stood waiting to be served at a sticky bar in a noisy nightclub with any pretensions whatsoever, you will be familiar with the aroma. Lime, mint, sugar, rum. It’s unmistakeably the smell of fun.

🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿

As I say, all this changed the way I thought about the Mojito. When I was getting into cocktails - this was in the post-Mad Men/Old Fashioned era - the Mojito (together with the Cosmopolitan) had the sickly aftertaste of something recently hip, and was therefore newly unhip. And it didn’t help that it’s also a bit of a ball-ache to make, too. It requires crushed ice for a start and if I was going to go to the effort of making crushed ice, I was probably going to make a Zombie or a Mint Julep and not something that they served in Inferno’s.

But while the Mojito may conjure bleepy house, Lucky Strikes and late-1990s theme bars - it’s actually a perfectly respectable classic Cuban cocktail of the 1930s. "Mi mojito en La Bodeguita, mi daiquirí en El Floridita", said Ernest Hemingway, in reference to the Havana bars associated with the city’s most famous cocktails. And there’s a theory that it was invented even earlier than that. There’s an ancient Cuban drink called El Draque, apparently named after Sir Francis Drake, which consists of aguardiente (‘firewater’), lime, mint and sugar. There are counter-claims that this evolved from a vernacular drink prepared by the slaves on sugar plantations. Still, the drink only acheived global fame after it became a hit on the Miami bar scene in the early 1990s and thenceforth went on to conquer the M&S ‘Ready-to-Drink’ aisle and acquire cult status. When Diane Abbott was papped on a London train breaking the no-alcohol rules that our fun-hating red-tape-loving Prime Minister had implemented while London Mayor, guess what she was drinking?

And while your average “craft” Negronophile will turn up their nose at the Mojito, it remains an important staging post in the 21st century cocktail renaissance. It’s impossible to make a Mojito without fresh ingredients. Prior to the Mojito’s moment, actual citrus fruits - let alone fresh herbs - were a rarity in bars. Now, they are essential.

Overfamiliarity means we can take the Mojito for granted. But really all a Mojito requires a little love, a little tenderness, a little care in order to shine. As do we all.

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PLAYLIST

The fresh smack of mint… the bulbs pushing their way through the earth… the buds on the trees ready to explode despite everything… this week’s playlist is all about freshness, renewal, new beginnings, spring cleaning, greeeeeeeenness. That sort of thing.

CW: Kool & the Gang.

Please note: if you follow this playlist it will automatically refresh each week - so make the most of it while you can! You can find a masterlist of all songs featured so far here.

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POEM OF THE WEEK

(H/T Susanna Hislop who sent this my way via Twitter, together with some useful houseplant advice).

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WHAT I’VE BEEN READING

Sirin Kale talks to a panel of men on what we can do to help the fight against male violence. (Guardian).

“I moved to the countryside and it wasn’t like I imagined it!” (Evening Standard). And if you like that you’ll LOVE the classic 2006 Standard piece “My tornado hell!” (archived HERE).

What is Conservatism? (LRB)

Nigel Slater on his garden (Observer)… which is part of this lovely collection of essays, In the Garden.

But mostly: The Glass Kingdom, the wonderfully atmospheric Bangkok thriller by Lawrence Osborne.

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SHOPPING LIST

Tequila, lime, grapefruit, agave syrup (or sugar/honey, fine), fizzy water. Some Campari or at a push, Aperol, wouldn’t go amiss too.

🥃 🍸 🍊  🍋