El Presidente

El Presidente is a Cuban cocktail of rum, vermouth, orange curaçao, and grenadine that took shape in Havana in the 1910s and 1920s. The earliest known printed recipe appeared in 1915 in the Manual del Cantinero, a Havana bartending guide by John B. Escalante, in a version that still included bitters, tying the drink closely to the Manhattan and the Martinez. Its name honors a Cuban president, though sources disagree on which one: some credit Mario García Menocal, in office from 1913 to 1921, while others point to Gerardo Machado, president from 1925 to 1933.

Who actually invented it is likewise disputed. Cocktail historian David Wondrich favors Constantino Ribalaigua Vert, then head bartender at a small café near Havana's Parque Central, citing a 1937 newspaper article that attributed the drink directly to Ribalaigua. Others credit American bartender Eddie Woelke, whose Havana workplace is given variously as the Sevilla Biltmore Hotel, the Jockey Club, or the Hotel Nacional, while a third account traces it as far back as 1915, crediting either the Vista Alegre bar or Menocal himself. The drink became the preferred cocktail of Havana's upper class through American Prohibition, when it also gained popularity among visiting American tourists. It was later further refined at El Floridita, where Ribalaigua by then presided as the bar's celebrated cantinero.

The drink's original formula called for blanc (Chambéry-style) vermouth, a detail later obscured by postwar bartenders who substituted dry vermouth, as in El Presidente (Dry Vermouth), until Wondrich highlighted the blanc vermouth requirement in 2012, spurring the drink's modern revival.