The El Presidente cocktail is one of those many cocktails with uncertain origins and many bartenders claiming credit.

There are two rival stories of who the cocktail is named after. One is Mario García Menocal, President from 1913-1921. The other is Gerardo Machado, who was a  general of the Cuban War of Independence and President of Cuba from 1925 to 1933.

The fact is that we can find the recipe in John Escalante’s 1915 Manual del Cantinero, which points to Mario Garcia Menocal.

There are also multiple claims to the invention of the cocktail. One story says it was the American bartender Eddie Woelke, however, Woelke only moved to Cuba in 1920 because of the Prohibition.

Others tell either being invented at the Café Vista Alegre or by President Menocal himself.

Perhaps El Presidente came to satisfy the Americans when visiting the Island during Prohibition time as an answer to the Manhattan cocktail and would soon become the preferred cocktail of the Cuban upper class.

Basil Woon, an American journalist and author of the tourist guide When It’s Cocktail Time in Cuba from 1928, wrote about El Presidente: “It’s the aristocrat of cocktails and is the one preferred by the better class of Cuban.”