Which rum do you use for a daiquiri?

The International Bartenders Association prescribes 60 ml of white Cuban rum for the daiquiri, with 20 ml of fresh lime juice and two bar spoons of fine granulated sugar.

The preparation is in there too: first stir until the sugar has dissolved, then add the ice, shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. The official recipe does not prescribe a garnish.

That fixes the ratio at three parts rum to one part lime juice. If you choose a heavier or lighter rum, you shift the balance of a recipe built on those three parts.

EU Regulation 2019/787 allows caramel in rum to adjust the colour and sweetening of up to 20 grams per litre, but adding flavourings to rum is prohibited.

For a daiquiri, that matters in practice. If the bottle already contains sweetness, you can reduce the two bar spoons of sugar in the recipe and adjust per glass.

A flavoured bottle falls outside the legal name rum. Anything made with added flavouring may not be sold as rum in the EU, and you can read that difference on the label.

Rhum agricole is distilled from fermented fresh cane juice, ordinary rum from molasses or syrup left over from sugar production.

The specification of the AOC Rhum de la Martinique lays it down: the rum comes from fermented sugar cane juice, the distillate is collected between 65 and 75 percent, and the juice may not be enriched with sugar, syrup or molasses. At the time of sale, at least 40 percent alcohol applies.

Under EU rules, the addition agricole or agricultural rum may only be used with a geographical indication from a French overseas department or the autonomous region of Madeira, and only if the rum is distilled exclusively from fermented sugar cane juice.

In the EU, rum may not be sold below 37.5 percent by volume, and for the AOC Rhum de la Martinique the lower limit is 40 percent.

That difference carries through to the glass. A daiquiri with 60 ml of rum at 40 percent contains more alcohol than the same cocktail at 37.5 percent, and with a rum above 50 percent it goes up further. A standard glass represents about 10 grams of pure alcohol; for spirits, 35 ml at 35 percent is used.

Wij verstrekken geen alcohol aan personen onder de 18 jaar. De Alcoholwet verbiedt dat in artikel 20, en in de winkel aan de Brink houden wij NIX18 aan.

In the shop in Bathmen there are 431 bottles of rum, of which 53 bottles of light, dry rum from 19 brands from 12 countries.

The largest countries of origin within those 53 bottles:

• 35 bottles of uit Cuba
• 3 bottles of uit Barbados
• 2 bottles of uit Jamaica
• 2 bottles of uit Panama
• 2 bottles of uit de Dominicaanse Republiek

The alcohol percentages in that selection range from 30 to 62 percent. If you want rhum agricole, there are 22 bottles from 9 brands from 8 countries, from 38 to 53.3 percent.