Holiday history, recipe, and Cuban protests two years later for Daiquiri Day and Captive Nations Week

Happy National Daiquiri Day! I'm opening today's observance with National Day Calendar's National Daiquiri Day | July 19.

Each year on July 19th, people across the United States fill their glasses with a rum-based cocktail and toast to National Daiquiri Day. So, raise your glass and join all of the others in this celebration!

#NationalDaiquiriDay
Daiquiri is a family of cocktails whose main ingredients are rum, citrus juice (typically lime), and sugar.

Since the video mentioned Ernest Hemingway, today's featured recipe is Hemingway Daiquiri | How to Drink.

On this episode of How to Drink, I’m partnering again with Luxardo and Anchor Distilling to bring you the Hemingway Daiquiri! This version is a classic alternative to the standard Daiquiri and my personal favorite way to prepare one, and the story goes that Ernest Hemingway had diabetes and he developed this recipe to be a less sweet version of his favorite drink. If you’re like me and love Hemingway then you should give this cocktail a try! Cheers!

That's not strictly true it turns out. The truth is that this drink was already on the menu at the Floridita bar in Havana Cuba where Hemingway was a regular where it was called Daiquiri #3. Hemingway was such a fan of the drink that it was eventually named after himself and a legend was born. Actually, it's also likely that it wasn't such an organic naming evolution, but rather that 'ol Papa Hemingway himself invented the whole diabetes story and named the drink after himself intentionally, he was of course a writer and renowned self promoter. I've read that the drink was also sometimes called a "Papa Doble" or "Papa Double" as he was known to order them "with twice as much rum and no sugar", which sounds likely. The daiquiri is of course a famous Cuban drink and there's no reason you shouldn't use Cuban rum here, in fact the original recipe calls for it. For me though, the Hemingway Daiquiri is particularly well suited to showing off a Rhum Agricole and that's my preferred configuration for this drink. If you prefer it with a Cuban, or a Peurto Rican, or really any rum at all feel free to make it that way, you really can't go wrong!

Hemingway Daiquiri Ingredients:
- .25 oz or 7 ml Luxardo Maraschino
- .25 oz or 7 ml Grapefruit Juice
- .75 oz or 21 ml Lime Juice
- 2 oz or 60 ml White Rhum Agricole
- Shake over Cracked Ice
- Pour in a Coupe
- Garnish with a Lime Wheel

I did not know that Hemingway was a diabetic, but that's in his Wikipedia entry, so I'll provisionally accept it as true. That means two things to me: I share something with a famous author and I learned something new, so it's a good day.

On the other hand, it's not a good day for a lot of Cubans, who protested the Cuban regime two years ago. WPLG examined their plight in Lawmakers show support for Cubans following 2-year anniversary of historic protests.

Tuesday marks two years since historic protests paralyzed the island of Cuba as hundreds took to the streets calling for change.

That was last Tuesday, which was National Mojito Day, not yesterday. I usually don't take serious looks at Cuba that day because it's also World Population Day. Priorities. Besides, today usually falls during Captive Nations Week, which gives double meaning to examining the island nation's issues today.

That's it for National Daiquiri Day and Captive Nations Week. Stay tuned for Moon Day as I finish my retrospective of Apollo missions 50 years later.