Nuclear Daiquiri

The Nuclear Daiquiri was invented in 2005 by Gregor de Gruyther, a young bartender at London's LAB (London Academy of Bartenders), who wanted to push a daiquiri's proof way up without losing the drink's balance. He landed on full-strength unaged Jamaican rum stacked against green Chartreuse and falernum, with lime doing the same acid work it does in any daiquiri. It barely registered on LAB's menu at first — bar manager John Gakuru later recalled it took repeat tastings before regulars came around to something so strong. De Gruyther died young in 2009; the drink has outlived him as a genuine modern classic, one of the 100 cocktails Robert Simonson included in his Modern Classics of the Cocktail Renaissance app.

A LAB Bar Original, Not a Guess

London's LAB Bar built a reputation in the 2000s for drinks engineered to be genuinely strong without turning into a dare, and the Nuclear Daiquiri is the clearest surviving example. De Gruyther wasn't chasing shock value — bar manager John Gakuru described the goal as looking "to deepen the Daiquiri experience and temper a very strong base spirit to retain its strength, but make it delicious." Overproof Jamaican rum supplied the strength; Chartreuse and falernum did the tempering.

The drink is well enough documented to trust: PUNCH, Difford's Guide, and multiple independent cocktail histories all credit de Gruyther and LAB Bar for the same 2005 date. After his 2009 death, other bars — Hawksmoor among them — kept crediting the recipe on their own menus to "the late, great Gregor de Gruyther," a rare case of a 21st-century cocktail with a name, a bar, and a year that all check out against multiple sources.

The Spec

This build follows the ratio most widely published and poured: equal parts overproof rum and lime, with green Chartreuse standing in for a daiquiri's usual sugar and falernum adding a spiced undertow beneath it. (Difford's Guide's own house version trims the lime slightly and adds a splash of water instead; both are defensible, but the 1:1:3/4:1/4 ratio below is the one most bars actually pour.)

Overproof rum is the point, not a flex

Wray & Nephew is the rum nearly every published version specifies by name — unaged, funky, and bottled at 63% ABV. Swap in a standard 40% white rum and this quietly turns into a regular daiquiri; the whole recipe is built around that extra proof surviving the shake and the ice.

Chartreuse instead of sugar

A classic daiquiri leans on simple syrup to balance the lime. Here, green Chartreuse does that job instead — sweet enough to round out the acid, but bottled around 110 proof with an assertive herbal bite, so the drink reads as complex rather than smoothed-over.

Falernum ties it back to tiki

The quarter-ounce of falernum is small on paper but does real work: its clove, lime zest, and almond notes are what tie the Nuclear Daiquiri back to tiki's spiced-syrup tradition, instead of letting it read as just "a boozier daiquiri."

Bottom Line

Most modern "big rum" daiquiris borrow the Nuclear Daiquiri's trick without crediting it: raise the proof, then build enough structure around it that strength reads as flavor instead of a stunt. Two decades after de Gruyther first poured it at LAB, the original still does that better than most of its imitators.