Friday, July 03, 2009 #

Cocktail Recipe: The White Zombie

Rum cream isn't an ingredient I use a great deal of (unless I'm feeling rather decadent when getting my Saturday morning coffee).  Last Fall, however, Rob V. Burr (aka Robert the Younger) of Gifted Rums asked me for my opinion on a Zombie recipe he had been working out, the White Zombie.  The goal of his recipe was to start with 4 oz of rum cream.  That's a lot of rum cream, but Rob's initial recipe intrigued me.  I told Rob that I'd think it over and maybe work on it a bit.  I put it in the back of my mind and quickly did almost nothing with it except for the occasional experiment when Rob would ask me if I had spent any time with the drink.

Well, I finally decided to get my act together and work on a recipe.  The original was OK, but it needed some tweaking.  Rob and I chatted online and via text over the course of a week and both came up with some recipes that we liked.  You can find Rob's here.  My own White Zombie recipe is still a work in progress, but I'm getting happier and happier with it as I move forward.  Rob's original concept was, as he put it, a spicy milkshake, and I tried to stay true to that.
White Zombie

2 oz Rum Cream (Cruzan Rum Cream)
1 oz Jamaican Rum (Appleton Estate V/X)
1 oz Rhum Agricole Vieux (Clement VSOP)
1 oz J. Wray & Nephew Overproof
.5 oz Cointreua
.5 oz Absinthe (La Fee)
.25 oz Allspice Dram

Combine ingredients in a tin and shake with ice.  Strain over crushed ice and dust with fresh nutmeg, garnish with a cinnamon stick.
Bringing the rum cream down to a more manageable 2 ounces instead of 4 was critical, keeping the drink much lighter and easier to sip.  The absinthe and Cointreau both add a nice contrast to the cream, while the allspice and nutmeg keep the "spicy" part of the concept in play.

So how about you?  Wanna take a stab at a White Zombie recipe?  Post your ideas in the comments or try out both recipes and let me know whether you prefer mine or Rob's!

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posted @ Friday, July 03, 2009 4:26 PM | Feedback (2)

Monday, June 29, 2009 #

Rum 101: Rum In The USA (Part 1)

When most people think of spirits in the United States, they think of Rye, Bourbon, or Tennessee Sour Mash - the Holy Trinity of American Whiskey.  What they don't realize is that another spirit has defined the US - and pretty much the entirety of the Western Hemisphere - almost since Europeans first set foot on the Western side of the Atlantic Ocean.  That spirit, of course, is rum.

In the 17th Century, sugar cane and its associated products were to the world powers what oil and its products are today.  The European colonies that dotted the Caribbean produced sugar in vast amounts on plantations, and traded with the home-countries as well as with the other, non-sugar-producing colonies.  Wars were fought with and for sugar and its spirited offspring, rum.  Author Ian Williams (Rum: A Social & Sociable History of The Real Spirit of 1776) often says that the Caribbean "was the Middle East of the 17th Century."

During the 18th Century rum established itself as a force in the colonial economy.  the colonies that made up New England purchased a great deal of molasses to process it into rum - both for local consumption and for use in trade.  People often refer to the Triangular Trade of molasses and sugar from the islands being shipped to the colonies to be converted to rum to be shipped to Africa (along with other goods) in exchange for slaves which could then be sent back to the islands to harvest more sugar cane.

When the colonists traded with Native Americans, it was often rum they used as currency.  When the traders from New England traded with the plantation owners of the South, rum was usually a large part of the exchange.

Rum was so ubiquitous that it was estimated (according to Wayne Curtis' ...and a Bottle of Rum)  that shortly before the Colonials began extricating themselves from British rule, the average American was drinking up to seven shots of rum per day.  As the American Revolution neared, rum had seeped into just about every facet of American life.

"No taxation without representation" was the cry of the revolutionaries.  The British government was levying unfair (in the  eyes of the colonists) taxes on everything that colonials saw as necessities for living, and rum was up at the top of the list.  The British heavily taxed (through the Molasses Act of 1733 and later the Sugar Act of 1764) molasses and rum exports from its Caribbean colonies to its colonies on the mainland and outlawed trade with the French islands, which could provide molasses at 1/3 the cost of the British islands.

During the War for Independence, the Colonial Army and Navy ran on rations of rum.  George Washington famously ordered a double-ration of rum for his troops on second anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 1778, and celebrated his first inauguration as President of the United States in 1789 with barrels of rum being offered to his guests.

While rum's eventual usurpation by whiskey caused it to fall to the periphery of the American consciousness for almost a century, its recent renaissance provides Americans with plenty of options to return to their molasses-soaked roots by drinking any of a number of American-made rums today.  Tipplers looking for classic American-style rums can find products such as Prichard's Fine Rum from Tennessee or Thomas Tew Pot Still Rum from Rhode Island.  More modern-styled offerings can be had from Old New Orleans Rum, Maui Rum, Sergeant Classick Rum, or Rogue Spirits - and a host of others.

And if you're interested in a nice drink to capture the spirit of your forefathers (or just looking for some really interesting rum drinks), there are plenty of options: from the basic grog to a shrub made with local fruits to the more adventurous flip.  For a great, refreshing, summer-time drink, you can't go wrong with Fish House Punch (recipe nicked from ...and a Bottle of Rum - but there are quite a few great recipes in books like Dave Wondrich's Imbibe!).

Philadelphia Fish House Punch

2 oz Rum (used Prichard's Fine Rum)
1 oz Cognac
1 oz Lemon Juice
2 tsp Sugar
.5 tsp Peach Brandy
Water or Club Soda

Mix ingredients in a tin (save the soda if you're using that instead of water) and shake with ice and strain into a collins glass filled with ice.  If using soda, top with soda.  Garnish with fresh peach slices or a lemon wedge.

Of course, America's history with rum doesn't end in 1776.  Although rum did lose ground to whiskey as farmers pushed into Tennessee, Kentucky, and the rest of what would become America's "Bread Basket" - thus making whiskey much cheaper and easier to produce than rum - rum would make a comeback...but that's for Part 2.

This post is part of the Rum 101 series of posts

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posted @ Wednesday, July 01, 2009 10:04 AM | Feedback (8)

Tuesday, June 16, 2009 #

Mixology Monday XL: Ginger!

Once every month the great cocktail enthusiasts of the world band together around a common, randomly selected theme to give you Mixology Monday.  Every month a different sucker - err - host chooses a theme and collects everyone's submissions.  This month, I am that sucker.

For the month of June we find ourselves smack dab in the middle of Mixology Monday XL!  That's right - for another TEN MxMo's this will be the grandest, largest, fattest Mixology Monday EVER!  For such an XL-ent event we needed a theme that would really allow all of the participants to really XL

Ginger is one of my all-time favorite spices.  About the only thing I love more than ginger is garlic, and I honestly didn't believe I would be widely embraced by the cocktail crowd for choosing garlic as a theme with less than one month to go before Tales of the Cocktail takes place in New Orleans.  So the call was sent out: Get thee some ginger and mix, mix, mix!  Here are the FORTY SEVEN people who answered the siren call.

UndertakingTheBar Jeff at UndertakingTheBar enters into his second-ever Mixology Monday and starts us off by submitting "a yet unnamed cocktail..." - a lovely-sounding and all-original gin-based cocktail with the gingery addition of Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur.
Urbane At Urbane-Not-Cosmopolitan, Chris makes his first foray into the wild world of MxMo with a tiki concoction featuring so many of my favorite ingredients that I confess to almost leaving work when I read his post so that I could head home and make a few dozen - you know, for research purposes.  Homemade ginger beer, pimento dram, falernum, rum, and more all mix together in the delicious-looking Koro Koola.
wordsmithing Another new participant, one Wordsmithing Pantagruel, comes running into the game with not one, but TWO drinks for your enjoyment.  Drawing inspiration from his own pool of friends, Pantagruel brings us the Ginger Balls and Chinesey cocktails.  Welcome to the party Pantagruel, new guy pays the tab.
Art of Drink's Darcy leads a double-life.  By day he is a super-scientist working hard on the sorts of subjects that I failed abysmally in college.  By night he is a super-mixologist working hard on creating drinks that I abysmally fail to make today.  Somewhere between those two he's a super-blogger too.  So I guess that's a triple-life of superheroism.  He dances close to the line this month by suggesting that Rye an Ginger might be better than rum and ginger, but we'll grant him some leniency in light of his other great works....this time.
ravensloft-spicy The Raven checks in with us next and submits a spicy, super gingery drink with a...salmony garnish?  Maybe I could  have gone garlic on everyone afterall.  The Raven's Loft; Spicy cocktail looks spicy, tasty, and like a pretty neat entree.
Crusta We return to our long list of first-timers for this month's MxMo (out of the bloody woodwork this month!) as one Mr. TheBastard joins the fray.  John submits a drink deriving its ginger kick and a dose of sweetness from a dose of Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur (I had a feeling we'd see a drink or two with that): The Brandy Crustacean.
summit Maybe I should have grouped all of our MxMo rookies together for some hazing.  DJ Hawaiian Shirt engages in his first MxMo with the Summit Cocktail, a heady mix of cognac, ginger, lime, and lemonade.  Sounds delicious, if - as DJ supposes - a tad difficult for a beginner.  I dunno, sounds like good fun to me.
weshootcocktails Elba and Angel, two very incredibly talented photographers and mixologists, decided to remind me that I am no photographer and post their first Mixology Monday entry.  "We thought it would be a great idea to create photoshoot and want to share with you our signature cocktail recipe, Ginger Frost."  Thanks for sharing, and making me feel incredibly inadequate while doing so.
GingerSmash Tranberg from the Drinksmeister family of sites comes to us with another first-time (but promised not to be the last-time)  MxMo entry.  The "Ginger Smash is a powerful drink, with ginger in almost every ingredient."  Tranberg isn't kidding: ginger syrup, ginger vodka, ginger something else, and just fresh ginger flavor this spicy take on the Smash.
zingiber Tiare, from A Mountain of Crushed Ice, is no stranger to Mixology Monday, great cocktails, or great photos.  She also happens to be a big fan of rum, and hence I'm a big fan of her.  Her Zingiber Cocktail is a delightful mixture of rum, more rum, ginger bitters, and ginger beer.
commonweal145 If there's one thing I like to do, it's enabling empowering people to go out and buy more delicious cocktail ingredients.  Frederic from CocktailVirginSlut heard the knock of opportunity at his door and set out to try some ginger wine in two cocktails: The Commonweal and the Gamble.  See?  I'm inspiring people to try new things.  RumDood.com: Inspiring People To Buy More Liquor Since 2007!
nanny152 Frederic's partner-in-crime, Andrea, also chimed in this month, drawing inspiration from favorite desserts and providing us with the Naughty Nanny.  Gin, lime, ginger syrup, yellow chartreuse...this is a cocktail that will spank you, if you're lucky.
scofflaws Marshall and SeanMike run Scofflaw's Den - a place the recently gave birth to a cocktail named in my honor.  Both guys are class-acts and true gentlemen.  OK, maybe I'm stretching the truth there.  Marshall submits two drinks, The Cure - a curious mix of Domaine de Canton and Miller Freaking Light, and the Ginger-Rhubarb Fizz.  SeanMike, on the other hand, decided to continue his torment of the blogosphere and has rendered unto us the SLOSHED, in honor of Marleigh and Dan over at SLOSHED!
elcentro_close_sm Speaking of Marleigh and Dan and drinks inspired by the idea of taunting your humble host, SLOSHED! brings us a delightful looking tiki drink, apparently rendered from the bottles I've left at their abode as I attempt to build RumDood Outpost #1.  The El Centro Cooler (named after my hometown) combines lots of my favorite spirit and lots of gingery ingredients - including my very own falernum!  Who says you can never go home?
firebiter KaiserPenguin, as written by Rick, is almost infamous for his many complex recipes requiring so many different special syrups.  Oddly enough, this month he tells us NOT to make ginger syrup - followed quickly by a recipe for ginger syrup and a recipe for a Firebiter cocktail which then uses said syrup.  If you find yourself not certain whether you should or shouldn't make the syrup, the answer is yes, make it, and then send it to me.
lilletsin Let's get back to hazing the rookies.  Jessamyn brings FoodOnTheBrain to the MxMo family with the Lillet Sin, a delightful-sounding cocktail with ginger, lime, mint, and Lillet Blanc.  As the French like to say, "Mmmm, c'est TASTY!"
gingerale1 Jon, up in Edinburgh, goes in a direction none have yet dared in this round-up.  Ginger jam?  Awesome!  Mixed with Campari, Courvoisier, and egg white?  With his gift of the La Roux, I may have a new hero.  Sorry, Camper.
gingershimmy Apparently there was a sale on the name "Jon" and it came with a free cocktail blog.  "Evil Jon" from DrinkPlanner participates in his first Mixology Monday with the Ginger-Grass Shimmy - which I challenge anyone to say after drinking 3 or 4 of them.
forrest Forrest is one of my favorite people in the world, and that's not just because he works at my favorite liquor store and organizes cool stuff like rum tastingsA Drink With Forrest has never joined in on all the MxMo fun before, but starts off participation with a bang - a whopping FOUR DRINKS.  I'm not sure where to start, but I recommend you start with the first and end with the last, or any other order you like - just drink'em all.
G-Mojito Der Cocktailwelt ist ein Auslese-Blog für Mixology.  In plain English, Christian from CocktailWelt runs an awesome cocktail blog that's worth reading even if your German is a little rusty.  He takes one of my favorite rum drinks, the Mojito, and infuses it with fresh ginger to bring you the Ginger Mojito.  Excuse me whilst I fetch my muddler.
gingerMojitoDone Ginger, rum, sugar, lime, and mint just all seem so natural together.  No wonder The 3Shiek blog (a rather clever pun derived from tres chic) also brought us a Ginger Mo'!
mxmoginger DrinkMix.de joins the German contingent this month, providing a nice write-up of the Ginger'nLime cocktail in both German and English.  Originally submitted for a cocktail competition run by mixology.eu, the drink combines gin, lime, ginger, and berry soda for a light, refreshing beverage.
gingerita The Cocktailians join the increasing list of blogs that opted for the Domain de Canton liqueur for their ginger flavoring agent.  While others have taken the mojito for a spin, they take the margarita out and dress it up for the ball as the Gingerita.  Que bueno!
BaiNai Matt Rowley of Rowley's Whiskey Forge shares my awesome first name AND last initial.  This makes me wonder why I didn't bump him to the front of the line.  Anyway, Rowley actually forgoes brown spirits and opts for vodka mixed with a host of ingredients (including my beloved falernum) in a Bai Nai Punch.  If you don't have any of the syrups, don't despair - he provides the recipes!
blue1 Yet another member of our ever-growing crew of Southern California cocktail bloggers, Chris from Blueprint Cocktail and The Varnish cocktail bar in Downtown Los Angeles brings us a new cocktail with a new spirit.  Seems the folks at Bacardi are bringing Oxley cold-distilled gin to our shelves and cabinets, and Chris started a-mixin' the Rhapsody In Blue: a combination of gin, ginger syrup, lemon juice, and blueberries, this is a delicious-looking drink.
deadbastard I've gone too many items without a tiki drink, and then Trader Tiki comes to my rescue.  Blair walks you through brewing your own ginger beer, a la Jeffrey Morgenthaler, and then uses his magical potion to make an even better potion: the Dead Bastard.
ginger_rose There was a time before bloggers ruled the e-roost of the Internet - a wild and unpredictable epoch when forums and CGI scripts ran unfettered through our many interconnected tubes.  A crazy time when one had to share their opinion and risk other people questioning their infallibility.  One of the many survivors of those early days, the e-Gullet Spirits & Cocktails forums, continues to produce some amazing discussion (while this site allows me to more or less bellow into the wind with little or no consequence).  I counted no fewer than ELEVEN drink recipes (including four from Chris Amirault alone!), all looking ridiculously good, and I'm not just saying that because so many of them use rum!
mr-antoni Journeying back across the Atlantic, this time to Foggy Londontown, Jay of Oh Gosh! (have you noticed the bevy of cocktail blogs with exclamation points in their names?) brings us the Mr. Antoni.  This riff on the Penicillin uses a Genever in the place of whisk(e)y as the base, and makes me hate Jay just a little bit for his access to a wider variety of Genevers than I have.
Antoine-Collins In a shocking turn of events, Doug over at the Pegu Blog has finally managed to get a MxMo entry in prior to the deadline.  I, for one, almost fainted.  Doug started down the path of a review of Bols Genever and ended up at Cocktailville, population Antoine Collins.
gingersangria OK, enough vets for the time-being, let's get back to bullying rookies.  Fiona over at Gourmet Pigs finally succumbed to the peer pressure of emails, tweets, and instant messages and posted her first of what we can all hope will be many Mixology Monday posts.  She indulges us with a twist on the famous Spanish concoction: Ginger Sangria.
darknstormydaiq First-timers abound this month, and Hank of Hank's Food & Drink Miscellany decided to join the party for MxMo:Ginger.  Hank takes a different approach to one of my favorite rum drinks and whips up the Dark'n'Stormy Daiquiri by mixing Gosling's Black Seal and everyone's favorite liqueur this month: Domain de Canton.
lowlander Brand new blogger David graces us with his VERY FIRST POST EVER!  Now THAT is how you start a blog people, by participating in the Extra Large event that is Mixology Monday XL: Ginger, hosted by the one and only, award-winning RumDood.com!  Where was I?  Oh, right.  David brings us the Lowlander, a mix of Scotch, lemon, simple, and ginger.
rum_of Stevi runs Two At The Most, and brings us yet another cocktail with the noblest of all spirits, rum.  She combines Zaya Gran Reserva with the liqueur du jour and bitters to fashion a Gingered Rum Old Fashioned.
sekanjabin Michael at A Dash of Bitters is a regular participant in Mixology Mondays, and a man that takes his Old Fashioneds very seriously.  Apparently Michael was somewhat troubled by the selection of ginger as the theme for the month - a problem I'm often faced with for Mixology Mondays.  What to do?!  Well Michael got ginger, sugar, mint, strawberries, vinegar and half a bajillion other ingredients into a Strawberry-Ginger Sekanjabin.  Say that three times fast!
lazy_lover Felicia and her Speakeasy is also no stranger to MxMo, and shows up for this one in fine style, and with another drink that some would claim was named after me.  Her Lazy Lover submission combines cachaca, ginger-honey syrup, and orange to create a great, refreshing drink.
shrift Jacob Grier is a D.C. refugee living life on the run in Portland, Oregon, where he makes up cocktails, lattes, and political observations.  His entry this month is the Shift Drink, made with rye whiskey, the oft-mentioned ginger liqueur, lemon juice, and Fernet-Branca.  Mmmm...shifty.
gingervit Sonja often finds herself Thinking of Drinking, which is probably why we get along so well.  She takes some of her very own aquavit (I want MY own distillery!) and submits two drinks containing it and a ginger contingent of some sort.  Will Domain de Canton appear in one of them?  You'll have to read her post to find out!
pinko Tiki Mama has been busy as-of-late raising Tiki Child, but was kind enough to drop in on this auspicious hosting of MxMo by the one and only me.  She even becomes only the second person to submit a drink using ginger jam, this time mixed with genever: The Pinko Cocktail.
strawberry-ginger-martini Drink of the Week's Jonas sends me a link to a concoction of Domain de Canton, strawberries, and vodka.  The Strawberry Ginger Martini looks like a sweet, delicious get-away for a warm summer evening.
gin-gin-gin-mule-480x640 Apparently there's a little-known bar in New York City (where-ever that is) called the Pegu Club, and this club may or may not make a cocktail called the Gin Gin Mule.  Kenn from Cocktailia.com brings us his adaptation: the Gin-Gin-Gin Mule.  When in doubt, add another gin I always say.  Gin, ginger syrup, lime, mint, and ginger beer?  Sounds like a winner to me!
gingerspicedaiquiri Reese felt like he had already done all there was to do with ginger in cocktails.  What possible challenge could my feeble MxMo post for CocktailHacker?  Well he puts together a ginger five-spice syrup and then uses it in a delicious-looking Ginger Five Spice Daiquiri.  Man, so many rum drinks, it's like people know my weakness or something.
dutchcaribbeanfizz Oh I do so love cross-overs.  Marvel vs. D.C., Star Trek vs. Metallica, the Los Angeles Clippers vs. a professional basketball team - they're great!  Jac's Rosarita Beach Cafe brings us a drink concocted during the Mixoloseum's Thursday Drink Night for Bols Genever: Dutch Caribbean Fizz.
lobo Alpha Cook's Nat sends in a drink that's eerily close to my submission, and I like it.  Great minds think alike, and apparently I think like them too sometimes.  Nat does get a tad fancier what with her special ginger, lemon, verbena syrup used in her Lobo-Marinho.
stormyweather Despite my great efforts to avoid endless jokes about this being MxMo XL (and jeez, there are enough entries to merit the name), Paul - the progenitor of our great cocktail party - was unable to avoid puns about rum, ginger, and meteorological phenomena.  That's why I love Paul, who blesses this party with the Stormy Weather, a great riff on the Dark'n'Stormy that uses Domain de Canton (what else?).
toydistrict Fellow Southern Californian Chuck Taggart checks in tonight rather close to the deadline, but with enough time to spare such that I shan't mock him when I see him next.  It would be doubly-hard to mock Chuck when you realize his submission is an original Chuck Taggart creation that was recently created for the Los Angeles Downtown Sub-District Cocktail Contest (or LADTSDCC for not-so-short): The Toy District Cocktail.
My only late entry for the month was Michael from My Aching Head - a wonderful little piece of Internet real estate that often profiles important bloggers and people in the rum "biz."  Much like myself, Michael has been somewhat taken by the El Presidente cocktail and used it as inspiration for his very own Gingerino, which is made with rum, dry vermouth, and fresh ginger.
A late-comer to the party, Dominik at the Opinionated Alchemist got to me a little tardy, but with a really interesting drink.  I've not had strawberry sake - Fujichiro Ichigo - before, but now I want to try it, and preferably in a Ginger Fujichiro.
DrinkSnob also encountered a few temporal difficulties, but did manage to make a fascinating drink, The Bracken.  Scotch, ginger, and maple syrup...all part of this complete breakfast!
ginger_caip_boxed And last, but certainly likely to be least, the man that put the "XL" in the waistband of Mixology Monday, your faithful author, submits his own Ginger Caipirinha - which is really just a caipirinha with ginger added, but it's SO darn delicious!  Plus, it gave me an excuse to use a muddler the size of a 1967 Cadillac El Dorado.

Whew.  That was an exhausting list.  It was massive, huge, and other such words that could be rightly applied to any event lucky enough to be the XLth event in a series.  Thank you to all of our particpants this month, and remember that MxMo XLI: Going Out is a scant month away at CocktailChronicles.com!

Tags: mxmo, cocktails, ginger

posted @ Tuesday, June 16, 2009 9:53 AM | Feedback (20)

Mixology Monday: Ginger - The Drink

Mixology Monday stares me down in the face again, and this month I've foolishly agreed to be the host of our monthly cocktail party.  I figured I'd throw out a drink submission of my own, however, before my own deadline expired and I was forced to break my own rules.

This month's Mixology Monday theme, as picked by me, is GINGER.  One of my absolute favorite spices.  It's so versatile and useful.  I love using it to nuance existing recipes just a tad, and I think you'll see in the round-up that I'm not alone in that respect.

You can find the round-up of more than FIFTY cocktails submitted for this month's MxMo here

Keeping this short, I wandered in to my kitchen today and beheld my newly washed, massive muddler - a gift from Leblon Cachaca.  When I say "massive," I mean "large enough to be used to play professional sports."  This thing is longer than my forearm, and about as big around as the inside of an old-fashioned glass.  Giant muddler (a "Murdler" if you will - thanks Craig), ginger, cachaca...what to do?

ginger_caip_boxed Ginger Caipirinha

2 oz Cachaca
1 oz Simple Syrup
Half of a lime, quartered
Sliced Ginger

Mix cachaca, simple, and ginger in a glass and muddle good and hard.  Add limes and muddle again.  Add ice and stir well.  Garnish with a slice of ginger.

Tags: mxmo, cachaca, cocktails, ginger

posted @ Tuesday, June 16, 2009 12:07 AM | Feedback (5)

Saturday, June 06, 2009 #

Rum Renaissance 2009: A Look Back

"Rum is not just a drink - it's a lifestyle."
                - Paul McFadyen, IP Bartenders

Rum Renaissance is the first major conference in the US dedicated to rum.  The festival is the brain child of Robert A. Burr and his family (wife Robin and son Robert V. Burr), and was organized this year in Miami, Florida by Quantum Leap Network - who publish the Burrs' Gifted Rums Guide - along with Contemporary Cocktails from New York, and the Rum Experience crew that also organize London's annual UK RumFest every October.

For four days I spent my time completely immersed in rum in South Florida.  Starting on Thursday morning, when I joined several of my peers to judge over 60 rums for the Ministry of Rum Tasting Competition (you may remember that I was a judge last year as well) for two days.  In addition to the competition, we spent our evenings at tastings and parties hosted by companies like Ron Atlantico, Ron Zacapa, St. Lucia Distilleries, Bacardi, and Appleton Estate.  And finally, on Saturday, the Grand Tasting started with over 20 rum producers and 1200 attendees all gathered together to taste and talk about rum.

In addition to my video above, be sure to check out the video on the rum competition and Rum Renaissance (including interviews with luminaries such as yours truly) put together by Rums of Puerto Rico, even if it does lack the awesome music track.

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posted @ Tuesday, June 09, 2009 8:27 AM | Feedback (1)

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