Habano Emperador: The Tenth Habano Festival Cocktail

Participants to Cuba’s premium cigar event will get a chance to attend a special session and sip at a one-and-only digestive cocktail that, according to tobacco mavens, is the undisputed companion for a good Habano.

Cinnamon liquor, toasted hazelnut licorice, 7-year-old aged Havana Club rum and a handful of coffee grains make up the right blend for the Habano Emperador cocktail, a drink thought up by Cuban bartender Juan Carlos Valladares that’s expected to make a splash during the Tenth International Habano Festival.

This perfect mixture of natural ingredients and Cuban-made components, like coffee and rum, is blazed before it’s served in a bid to both underscore the flavor and light up a good cigar –preferably a Montecristo No. 3, as Mr. Valladares himself suggests- with the fluttering flame given out by the drink.

The cocktail had entered a contest and prevailed in a down-to-the-wire finale with other drinking fantasies, like Señor del Destino, created by bartender Eunice Brito, or the Habano Compay, blended by his colleague William Arias.

Juan Carlos Valladares, the creator of the Habano Emperador, serves drinks at the El Emperador restaurant, one of the most sought-after bohemian places of Havana back in the 1950s. Now fully restored, the restaurant provides patrons with top-notch service and exquisite cuisine from the turf and elsewhere.

Habano Emperador Cocktail

Ingredients: ½ ounce of cinnamon liquor 1 ½ ounces of toasted hazelnut licorice 1 ½ ounces of 7-year-old aged Havana Club rum 3 grains of Cuban coffee

Preparation: Blend the ingredients in a shaker, no ice, and add the three grains of Cuban coffee in the mixture. Blaze it before serving, so that the patron could light up a good Habano with the flame coming from the drink.