A canchánchara in its clay pot, TrinidadLa Canchánchara
- Best time
- Late afternoon, for one drink
- Getting there
- In the old town, near Plaza Mayor
Why it’s in the log
The canchánchara is rum, local honey, lime and water, served cold in a small clay pot. The usual story is that independence fighters — the mambises — drank a warm version during the Ten Years' War against Spain. Other accounts put its origin further east, or earlier still; nobody can settle it, and its reputation as Cuba's oldest cocktail is as much tradition as record.
La Canchánchara has served it since 1984, when the state-run Palmares group opened this tavern in an old house in Trinidad's colonial centre. The timber roof is the old part — the sources date it to the 1720s or the 1730s, and don't agree which.
It is a fixture of every Trinidad itinerary and doesn't pretend otherwise. Come for one drink in the clay pot, in the courtyard, not for dinner.
Mentioned alongside
Trinidad
A sugar-boom colonial town of cobbles and pastel houses, where the local drink comes in a clay pot.
Spain
Eleven distinct regions under one flag — the food, the hours and the accent change every few hundred kilometres.
Cuba
Private kitchens in old mansions, rumba in a painted alley, and a country that rewards checking everything the day before.