Copa del Vidrio Roto

1 oz white rum
3 oz broken glass from rum bottles I dropped on the floor
lime wedge
3 oz generic cola

I have no idea what the “count” is on his spouted bottle. Some spouts are “precision pour,” with ball bearings that cut the bartender off at a certain point–a point that might insult me, the customer, more than a measured pour will.

Sometimes, I’m in the mood for that, and I don’t mind a cheapass ounce of well rum mixed with four ounces of Coke from a gun, with a brown, dried-out lime perched on the edge, just waiting for me to toss it to the floor.

But that’s not a Cuba Libre.

On the vanilla bean note… I’m not sure that’s a vanilla bean. If so, it’s VERY fat. What I immediately thought I was seeing was either licorice root or a sassafras stick. But when Hombre Secreto started drinking out of it, I was thrown for a loop. With sassafras being so long out-of-fashion (due to FDA regulations), it does make sense that someone might try to bring it back in style. Perhaps someone whittled a hole through the middle, and they were marinated to keep them from drying out? Or… it could just be a really fat vanilla bean.

I was also thinking: if you’ve got precision pour-spouts on your bottle, then why are you bothering to use a jigger?

What I appreciate about this most is that he largely nails just what I expect when I order a Cuba Libre. Leaving aside the choice of rum, my only quibble with his technique is that I think a Cuba Libre needs about twice as much lime juice as he added. But that’s it. Otherwise, he prepared a Cuba Libre you’d expect from a respected craft cocktail bar: hand-cut ice, fresh juice, jiggered pour, cola from a bottle instead of a gun.