The Spirit of Sugarcane: Story Cuban Rum: 2

The world drinks Cuban rum. Almost nobody knows where it came from.The Spirit of Sugarcane traces five centuries from Columbus's landfall to the bar on your corner - sugar as the New World's second currency, the rough cane spirit nobody wanted, and the Spanish ambition, French technology and Cuban stubbornness that turned it into liquid gold.Then it goes to Havana. El Floridita, La Bodeguita, Sloppy Joe's, and the legendary cantineros behind them. And it sets the record straight on the five great Cuban classics - the Mojito, Daiquirí, Cuba Libre, El Presidente and Piña Colada - several of which have the wrong inventor, the wrong city, or the wrong century attached.Along the way: how modern Cuban rum is actually made, how it differs from Jamaican, Barbadian and rhum agricole, and how to taste it properly. Plus recipes spanning three hundred years, from an eighteenth-century Stomach Julep to prize-winning drinks from Cuba's new generation.Eight years of research. A great many myths retired. One island's spirit, finally told straight.