by Wayne Curtis
(let's see if this guy can single-handedly bring
back a long-forgotten and tasty cocktail)

In the savage ecosystem of the cocktail lounge, newly invented mixed drinks generally appear from nowhere, compete fiercely for a time, and then disappear. Some fine concoctions claw their way to the top and remain there exceedingly pleased with themselves, like lions on the savannah. The whiskey old-fashioned, the Manhattan, and the mint-julep — all of which have been around for more than a century — are among the best examples of this. Meanwhile, many execrable drinks are chased into the swamps, where they die a slow and lingering death. This is as it should be. The world is not a lesser place because nobody remembers how to make a Harvey Wallbanger.

In this chaotic and often brutal environment, however, many noble cocktails tragically and inexplicably disappear. Among them: the Eighth Ward, the Bronx (and its variant, the Income Tax Cocktail), the Jack Rose. At times, a drink is lost because its ingredients have gone extinct, such as forbidden fruit liqueur, an essential ingredient in, among others, the Pousse Cafe Variation #5 and the Adam and Eve. Other drinks flare up like a sudden sunspot and then disappear for little reason, scarcely leaving a shadow. Does anyone remember the "Atoms for Peace" cocktail of the mid-1950s, made of brandy, champagne, and blue curacao? I didn't think so.

To my mind, the lost cocktail most worthy of lamentation and keening is El Presidente, a mix of rum, curacao, vermouth, and grenadine, which had its heyday from the 1920s through the 1940s. It has more or less vanished without a twist. In only one city is this not the case: the place where it was created, and where I first happened to sip it: Havana, Cuba.

Old Havana is rightly famous for its splendid historic architecture, but it's also an unheralded preserve for Prohibition-era drinks. Havana, after all, was the Las Vegas of North America during the dry years of Prohibition (1920-1933). Great fleets of ships and planes conveyed hordes of thirsty Americans south to Havana, and hundreds of bars and nightclubs strove to accommodate them.

According to Esquire cocktail editor David Wondrich, El Presidente was created by Eddie Woelke, an American bartender at the Jockey Club in Havana. He shrewdly named the drink in honor of President Gerardo Machado, who ruled Cuba throughout most of the Prohibition years. Basil Woon, author of When It's Cocktail Time in Cuba, wrote in 1928 of El Presidente, "It is the aristocrat of cocktails and is the one preferred by the better class of Cuban."

That same year the eponymous President Machado himself offered an "El Presidente cocktail" to U.S. President Calvin Coolidge, who was attending a conference, inside Havana's opulently mirrored Hall of the Presidents. This was a moment of unsurpassed presidentiality. It may also have been a moment of some awkwardness, what with Prohibition in the U.S. and all. A reporter noted that Coolidge declined the drink.

After Repeal, El Presidente crossed the Florida Straits and headed north, where it was met with popular but not universal acclaim. In the late 1930s some drinkers in New Orleans, resentful of the intrusion, "staged a revolution and invented the El Dictador, because a dictator ... can kick the pants off a president," according to one newspaper columnist.

The coup failed. As late as 1949, Esquire's Handbook for Hosts noted, "The vanguard of Manhattan's cognoscenti has discovered what regulars of El Chico in the Village have known for many a moon: the El Presidente cocktail is an elixir for jaded gullets."