The mojito time warp

When I first saw the cover of the May/June Market Watch, a trade publication covering the adult beverage industry, I had to double check the date. Because the cover story is about this new cocktail, called "the mojito," which America has apparently embraced.

Isn't that a bit like Rolling Stone reporting that "kids today are listening to a rough sort of street poetry they call 'hip-hop."? I had actually been wondering lately just when the mojito had peaked. Last year, a magazine editor even made me strike a reference to "trendy new mojiitos" because it sounded outdated. And she was in Boston, not New York. But apparently it hasn't peaked yet.

In any event, I'm pleased that the mojito is getting the added attention. it deserves to cemented as a classic, and getting "discovered" every year for the next five years or so should about do it. I've got a section in my book on the mojito's history - or at least what's known of it, which, frankly, isn't much, at least not conclusively. It's been around for nearly a century, and likely started as the drink of the Cuban campesino - the sugar, lime and mint would take the rough edge off the nasty, cheap rum. The mojito migrated to Havana's working class beaches, and then made the leap to the tourist nightclubs that boomed during U.S. prohibition.

In 1939, Charles Baker reported on the "greatly improved rum collins" at Sloppy Joe's in Havana, "garnished with a bunch of fresh mint." That same year, the New York Times reported from the Cuban pavilion at the New York World's Fair that they were giving away a booklet instructed one on "the art of concocting three kinds of Daiquiri cocktails and twelve other thirst quenchers made of Havana rum, including the Mojito and the famous Planter's Punch."

The mojito has come and gone since then. But I'm guessing it's now here to stay. And for that we can all be happy - unless, of course, you're a bartender who has to deal with the plague of wilted mint leaves.