As Ernest Hemingway's birthday rolls around each July, Florida bars from Key West to Miami Beach shake mojitos in tribute to the Nobel Prize-winning author.But Hemingway scholars say one of the writer's most enduring cocktail legends is probably just that — a legend."I think his connection to the mojito is probably more myth than reality," said Mark Ott, a Hemingway scholar who has edited the Teaching Hemingway book series and served as a consulting editor on Ken Burns' and Lynn Novick's "Hemingway" documentary.
"There's not much of a record of him drinking mojitos."The myth is often traced to Havana, Cuba's famed La Bodeguita del Medio, where a handwritten inscription attributed to Hemingway proclaims, "My mojito in La Bodeguita, my daiquiri in El Floridita."CHEF WHO FLED COMMUNIST COUNTRY OPENS WORLD'S FIRST MICHELIN-STARRED CUBAN RESTAURANTBut historians have long questioned both the authenticity of the signature and whether the restaurant even operated in its current form during much of Hemingway's time in Cuba, where he wrote "The Old Man and the Sea," which earned him a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1953.This inscription on display in La Bodeguita del Medio restaurant in Havana, Cuba, is said to be handwritten by Ernest Hemingway, but many scholars of the author doubt its authenticity.(Roberto Machado Noa/LightRocket via Getty Images)Nevertheless, the inscription has become a staple of tourism and cocktail culture.By contrast, Hemingway's affection for daiquiris is well-documented.
Ott said the author was a regular at El Floridita in Havana, where bartenders developed what became known as the papa doble, a variation of the daiquiri made with extra rum and no added sugar.CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR OUR LIFESTYLE NEWSLETTER"The daiquiri is Hemingway," agreed Frank Gonzalez, the corporate beverage director for Havana 1957, a South Florida restaurant group known for its Cuban cocktails.Gonzalez said Hemingway likely enjoyed both mojitos and daiquiris during his ...