“I was not proud of what I had learned but I never doubted it was worth knowing.”

-Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary

At the moment we don’t have a seasonal rum drink on the menu at Rustic. I woke early this morning to this grim, sad, and embarrassing realization. You see, rum is the best. If you want to elicit a small from a humble bartender such as myself, simply order a daiquiri. It only happens every so often at the restaurant, but when it does, I smile, make the drink, and if it’s not too busy, run the cocktail to the table myself to see the person who ordered it.

I can prove many facts of life in just a few moments alone with a vintage Etch o’ Sketch Animator and challenge anyone to prove me wrong…This one is no different–The daiquiri still reigns supreme as the best cocktail on the block. It’s an ongoing joke between Gabe and I. We say to one another, lime juice, sugar, rum, and chuckle. It’s so freaking easy…Yet…No one in the “real world” is onboard. It’s a darkly comic fact that many of the only people that care about the quality things in life happen to be the twisted mutants who work in restaurants…Probably because serving people makes you want to be served…And then…There’s an even smaller sub sector of these miscreants and reprobates who know a good cocktail…And down we go, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing, adjusting the microscope’s lens fine enough to view the rum heads.

Yeah, these are the freaks like Angel, Denise, and myself, who crack a fresh bottle of the good stuff and inhale the wafting of rum essence from the open hole like a normal person would sniff a bouquet of flowers. Ah yes. I’m not sure how we got this way but we know there are others like us. I can think of T&E and L&J right off the bat. Secret rummies that go through their normal motions and at the end of it all, when they are free of responsibility, imagine a cool daiquiri to help siphon off the stress and woes of the rat race.

Cold day. Daiquiri. Warm day. Daiquiri. Bad day. Daiquiri. Good day. Daiquiri. You get the point.

Let’s get a good daiquiri recipe out of the way now.

1 oz. White Rum (preferably White ‘Stach)

1 oz. Dark Rum (preferably Plantation dark or Appleton Estate signature)

1 oz. Fresh Lime Juice

.5 oz. Rich Demerara Syrup

Smidgen Smith and Cross

Smidgen Blackstrap

Shake like you mean it, double strain into a cold coupe, etc. Quaff.

A common thing we hear behind the bar is, “But rum is so sweet.” I get it. If you look at many of the old Trader Vic and Don the Beachcomber recipes from back in the day, they’ve got a lot of two things: Rum and sugar. The sugar helped mask the enormous amounts of rum they were putting in the drinks to get you bombed. Listen to me, rum itself is not sweet, it’s just…Delicious. Once you dive in, there’s a whole world of it out there.

Rum comes from sugar cane, yes, more technically, the molasses left over from the sugar making process, but once it’s distilled there’s no sugar in the actual rum. That said, some rum manufacturers do add a bit of sugar to sweeten it. You’ll have to do your own research on who and why and what but it’s easy to tell right off the bat. Use Google.

There’s also many rum sub-categories, as rum, unlike many other spirits, can be made literally anywhere and often is. Let’s go over two of them. Rhum agricole and cachaça. Unlike normal rum, both are made with fresh cut sugarcane. What do we get out of this? Well, terroir, for one, also something called “hogo” which basically means funkiness. This funk comes about by way of the magnificent pot still. See below:

The pot still is great at imparting flavor and funk into whatever it is distilling. Why? Well, it’s complicated but let’s just say the pot still leaves more congeners (impurities, flavors) in the fermentation and distillation process than something like a giant column still they use for vodka or any other neutral grain spirit. The pot still process takes longer and most of the time makes smaller batches as well, both good things. Hence, hogo.

If your rum doesn’t have hogo, that’s ok too, it’s probably meant to be more accessible to the average person in the public because not everyone wants a funky rum. For sure, it’s a taste you have to grow accustomed to. The average punter doesn’t like it, but a good bartender, well, now we’re talking. If you need direction, steer toward Jamaican rum, most of which are pretty damn full of hogo. Brands like Wray and Nephew overproof, Smith and Cross Navy Strength, and Hamilton Jamaican Pot Still Gold are all great places to start. Also, don’t forget Rhum agricole and cachaça.

If you want to skip ahead, and learn more, just read Smuggler’s Cove: Exotic Cocktails, Rum, and the Cult of Tiki by Rebecca and Martin Cate, owners of the bar, Smuggler’s Cove in San Francisco. It’s a magnificent tome concerning rum and the backbone of how the tiki craze started in the U.S., most notably here in Southern California.

As far as rum literature goes, there’s one tome I can think of offhand. The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson. Thompson preferred whiskey, blended scotch, vodka, and actually green chartreuse (among a plethora of other substances), but in his early days, right after the book, Hell’s Angels, he wrote an overlooked novel, his first and last of true “fiction” about a journalist who travels down to San Juan, Puerto Rico and goes through the normal sort of hijinks you’d expect. The book was written in 1967 but not published until 1998. Who knows? I guess his more Gonzo journalism type stuff was more publishable? Anyway, it’s magnificent and you should read it. I did many years ago and it left an impression. I should probably give it a reread one of these days. Thompson is one of the greats that you don’t think much about…Until you do. Until you delve into him a bit and he sucks you in. The quote below sums up the type of antics prevalent in his writing but he also wrote some outstanding observational work concerning America, politics, and society in general.

I’ll leave you with this one:

“One of my central memories recalls an evening of mescaline and a load of honeydew melons from the Farmers Market. With a room full of rum & music & freaks, we had a melon-eating orgy on the hotel balcony overlooking the Strip, and afterwards hurled the rinds down on passing cars.”

–Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas