Mojito

The Mojito is a classic highball that consists of white rum, lime juice, sugar, club soda, and mint.

Though there are many ways to prepare a Mojito, the tool perhaps most associated with creating the cocktail is the muddler. A pestle-like tool with a blunt sometimes textured base, the muddler is used to press herbs, fruit, and other ingredients — in this case, fresh mint — to release its flavor and essential oils, creating a highly aromatic drink.

While a muddler serves an essential function, a few other kitchen basics will work in its stead: Try the handle of a wide wooden spoon, a dowel, or even the end of a French-style rolling pin. For a good Mojito, it's key to break down the mint leaves without mashing them to a pulp. Strong, even pressure to press the leaves will express their minty, fragrant essential oils without overworking the leaves.

Once the leaves are muddled, the mint gets combined with rum, lime, and sugar — all ingredients local to the cocktail's country of origin: Cuba.

The origins of the Mojito

Like many classic cocktails, the Mojito's history is unclear and largely unconfirmed. And, like many rum-based cocktails coming out of the Caribbean, often seen as a 'vacation cocktail' for Americans and Europeans, with a mainstream story whitewashed by a long colonial history of the region. The Mojito, a cocktail born out of the Caribbean, is often associated with Ernest Hemingway who had the cocktail in Cuba and made with rum whose bottles tout colonial motifs like pirate ships and plantations.

Indigenous South Americans have consumed the lime, mint, sugar, and sugarcane spirit combination for medicinal and recreational purposes for hundreds of years. When enslaved Africans worked the sugarcane fields of Cuba in the 19th century, some drinks historians point to this time in history when the cocktail first came together. The drink transformed into the bubbly highball we know today soon after Prohibition hit the U.S. and Havana became a popular destination.