Russell Thoede didn’t intend to put the Mojito Caballito on the menu at Lei Low, the tiki bar in Houston that he runs with his wife, Elizabeth. But for an immersive New Year’s Eve party to ring in 2018, the bar transported guests to Sloppy Joe’s—Havana’s iconic expat haven—and he developed a recipe for the drink that would please the everyday Mojito drinker while also attracting new devotees. It was so good that, ever since, whenever someone orders a Mojito at the bar, they now get the “Caballito” version, which includes the simple addition of French vermouth.
Despite the fact that Lei Low stands firmly in the tiki category, the Cuban canon is woven into its program, in part because the founders of the tiki genre had so much reverence for that tradition. Thoede cites an example of this connection: Victor “Trader Vic” Bergeron once traveled to Cuba with Conrad Hilton, wherein he toured the country’s bars, trying classics like the Daiquiri and Mojito in their native home.
According to Jeff “Beachbum” Berry in his book Potions of the Caribbean, the Mojito Caballito emerged at Sloppy Joe’s bar in the very early 1930s. The drink is one of several variations on the classic combination of rum, lime, sugar, mint and soda that became popular in Cuba during that decade. Some of these swapped the rum out in favor of gin or even Cognac, or dashed bitters into the mix, but the Caballito version keeps the Mojito’s essential makeup, adding a small measure of French vermouth. (Berry asserts it was about four dashes, or a quarter-ounce.) “French vermouth” is alternately interpreted by modern bartenders as referring to the blanc or dry styles; Thoede opts for blanc.
When choosing that vermouth, instead of going for industry standard Dolin, or an Italian product like Carpano Bianco, Thoede chose a sherry-based version of the aromatized wine, Lustau Vermut Blanco, for its distinctive “rancio” quality and light salinity, plus notes of citrus and pear and a distinct “sherry-ness,” as Thoede puts it. He says the sherry vermouth acts as a “binder” for the drink’s other ingredients.
The choice of rum, meanwhile, was obvious from the outset. Since this was a Mojito variation, Thoede reached for Lei Low’s house Mojito rum, Foursquare Probitas. With the strong flavor of the sherry-based vermouth, says Thoede, “we need a little more pungency to punch through the rest of those flavors.” The rum delivers fresh tropical fruit, vanilla and a little funk.
Requests for variations on tropical classics are common at Lei Low—“We had a lady that would come in that would ask for a coconut Mojito,” Thoede recounts—so the bar had already standardized a ratio for Mojitos with a twist. When it came time to make the Caballito, all he had to do was plug the blanc vermouth into the “Mojito variation” template’s blank slot, and it worked beautifully. Lei Low’s Mojito template is heavy on the lime, with one full ounce, and three-quarters of an ounce of the house simple, which features an unusual 3:2 ratio—somewhere between “rich” (two parts sugar to one part water) and standard (a 1:1 ratio).
There’s something else that’s distinctive about the bar’s Mojitos: The mint is not muddled. Thoede says he witnessed Cuban bartenders skipping the muddling, especially at high-volume, fast-paced bars. Likewise, at Lei Low, bartenders combine mint and lime juice with simple syrup in a Zombie glass before pouring Topo Chico on top. They gently agitate the mix before adding ice and rum, which is followed by a light swizzle step (at Lei Low, they call it a “churn”), then top with yet more ice and garnish. This, says Thoede, “gives you a cleaner mint flavor instead of that old muddled, broken, bruised mint.” (The ice at Lei Low, it should be noted, is slightly bigger than pebble-size, but, says Thoede, “still crushable, chewable.”)
The Mojito Caballito isn’t always on the menu, but it’s what guests now always get if they order the Cuban classic. Thoede says guests thoroughly enjoy it, whether they realize there’s something different about it or not. After all, he says, it’s tailor-made for the thick, hot air that pervades Houston each summer. “It’s a nice refreshing little elixir,” he says. “It really, really hits the spot.”
