Gosling's Family Reserve Rum

Well look who remembered his Blogger password. Life happens. Blogs get neglected. It’s a recurring theme. I hope you’ll find it in your e-hearts to forgive. A peace offering of sorts, a few thoughts on a premium rum I hadn’t seen around these parts. Champagne bottle. Hand-numbered. Dipped in black wax (hence the Gosling's "black seal" name). All things that denote something special. And pricey. Maybe this might be of interest to Perth locals eying off a bottle (I bought this at the excellent Raffles Liquor Merchants on Canning Bridge) or anyone completing some pre-purchase recon via Google. Atypical rum aromas of nuts and honey. Based on olfactory and visual cues, I’d probably believe you if you told me this was a glass of muscat. Entry in the mouth is very gently-gently with little spirituous thwack (this is a 40%ABV bottling). Refined isn’t a word one normally associates with brown spirits but in this case I’d think long and hard about allowing it. Gingerbread through the finish together with a handful of similar flavours. Long, assured, hard to see where the joins are. A rum whose flavours fall somewhere between the vegetative lift of agricoles and the flavour king-hit of older rums. Not quite well-priced, but still glad to have it in the collection.

Hemingway Daiquiri

Just in time for World Daiquiri Day tomorrow, here's my current method for making a Hemingway. If you haven't got all the ingredients in your cupboard, do yourself a favour and order one at your favourite bar. In the same way not not everything poured in a cocktail glass is a martini (or blah-tini), daiquiris aren't just restricted to the contents of a frozen slushee machine.

While great, the agricole blanc called for in this recipe is entirely optional - feel free to swap out your fave white rum or even white spirit. I've used gin in the past with good results, although calling it a daiquiri doesn't seem quite right. Anyone got a good name for a Rose's-less gimlet with a dash of maraschino?

As history tells us, Papa Doble drank his daiquiris without sugar, however this was merely a survival tactic as the great author was diabetic so don't feel like you've got to grit your way through a cup full of citric acid in the name of tradition.

Also, this recipe assumes you're using ruby grapefruits rather than the tarter white ones (which are hard to find at the moment in Perth). If you do luck out and manage to get some of the white variety, maybe add a touch more simple syrup - I make mine using a 1:1 sugar to water ratio, the sweetness of yours will dictate the amounts added - to snap the drink into balance.

I'd also like to credit Imbibe magazine and 320 Main for hipping me to the lime-shell-in-shaker trick to ramp up drinks with extra pithy-ness. Hooray for resourcefulness, I say.

Hemingway

45ml PMG Rhum Blanc Agricole
22.5ml grapefruit juice
15ml lime juice
7.5ml Luxardo Maraschino
5ml simple syrup (or to taste)
1 spent lime shell¹

Combine over ice in a mixing glass and shake for 15 seconds. Double strain into a chilled cocktail glass. No garnish.

¹If you've got time, cut the lime shell in half again to maximise surface area and thus flavour extraction, but don't sweat it if your citrus goes straight from the cutting board into the shaker either.

Patrick

I find it odd when a cocktail recipe simply says “vermouth” rather than specify between the (generally) drier French and (generally) sweeter Italian varieties. Yet looking at the recipe provided for a Patrick¹ in Cooking with Cognac (1978, Andrée Marik) [5/10 cognac, 3/10 rum, 2/10 “vermouth”] it's hard to go past a dry vermouth as a counterweight to the brown spirit oomph, although if anyone wants to experiment with, say, Punt e Mes, don't let me stop you.

Although Noilly Prat is one of my go-to martini vermouths, I figured Dolin Blanc² might be a better fit. Compared to Noilly Prat, I find Dolin Blanc a drier, finer and more herbal vermouth: traits I might not be after when making a martini - I'm a sucker for the citrus hit of Noilly Prat, although truth be told, I'm more likely to reach for Lillet Blanc when casting a silver bullet - but just the ticket for introducing length and structure to a mixed drink.

Next, to the rum. Instead of Zacapa, Diplomatico and their similarly rich, caramel-leaning ilk (not that it stopped me from trying: a Zacapa Patrick was the hefty one-note ditty I thought it'd be) I reached for the (comparatively) lighter-bodied Pyrat XO. Neat, I find Pyrat XO’s citrussy, cedary charms a touch too overt, but suspected they'd play nicely with the cognac - which, in this case, was the rest of the fruity, approachable Courvoisier VS. During my trials, I swapped in some Otard VSOP to see how an older brandy would fare, but similar to the Zacapa, the jump in weight class threw out any semblance of balance.

Prior to my cognac forays, “zesty” wasn’t a characteristic I’d associate – or chase – in a cognac-based drink. If only Max Veenhuyzen circa April 2012 had been introduced to the joys of the Patrick sooner.

Patrick
(Based on a recipe published in Andrée Marik’s Cooking With Cognac, an English reprint of Le Cognac Gastronome)

30ml Courvoisier VS cognac
20ml Pyrat XO rum
10ml Dolin Blanc vermouth

Stir over ice for 30 seconds and strain into a chilled glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

¹ Anyone got intel on the Patrick cocktail? Since cognac, rum and vermouth aren't exactly uncommon spirits, I figured “Patrick” might well be a local name for another cocktail but save for this cursory mention, my research has proved fruitless.

² A recent arrival on Australian shores, Dolin Blanc is the only vermouth still made according to Vermouth de Chambéry AOC guidelines. While the history of Vermouth de Chambéry goes back to 1821, the appellation - while many French wine styles have their own AOC or appellation, Vermouth de Chambéry is vermouth's only AOC - was only officially recognised in 1932, instantly prompting the question: who were the other Vermouth de Chambéry producers that have fallen by the wayside or have been swallowed up by larger vermouth producers? At any rate, Dolin remains the sole Vermouth de Chambéry on the market.

And so we come to the last of my cognac cocktail discoveries. I must say, I’ve enjoyed having a “theme” to work to and starting in July, am going to start assigning myself monthly research topics. Any suggestions from the readership?

Smoke & Oakum’s Gunpowder Rum

Been loitering 'round the Perth food and wine Twitter group water cooler of late? Odds are you've overheard some scuttlebutt concerning Smoke & Oakum’s Gunpowder Rum, a small-batch rum from Wellington that’s recently become available in Perth care of Leederville's International Beer Shop.

While on assignment in the New Zealand capital for Australian Gourmet Traveller, I lucked out and got to try the rum thanks to the city's highly with-it tourism body that plies visiting journos with - among other things - small bottles of the stuff. Tasty, tasty stuff, it is, all rich, sweet'n'spicy and warm with both Scoville and high-proof heat (as you'd expect from a 51% ABV spirit).

Like any shrewd seafarer, I’ve been rationing my stash since, partially because it’s a neat souvenir of a great trip, but also because I figured my chances of getting more were close to nil. Demand far outweighed supply, even in the rum’s home town: not least because (at least circa July 2011) bottles were only obtainable by bartering with creator Ben Simpson, former manager of Wellington’s truly excellent Motel cocktail bar.

According to Simpson, Smoke & Oakum’s Gunpowder Rum – something that started as just another in-house booze experiment during his six-year tenure at Motel – is a blend of rums ranging in age from two to 15 years sourced from not-New Zealand (“Sugar cane doesn't grow well here,” he says. “Also, the climate isn’t terribly conducive to proper ageing”). As the blend’s composition changes with each batch, there's no age designation. Interestingly, this practice of blended rum is – like a lot of current bar trends – a throwback to the old school when bartenders would assemble “house” rums. Something for West Australian bars to consider, maybe, especially with Ord River Rum doing its thing in Kununurra?

As the name suggests, there’s gunpowder in the mix along with chilli and other flavouring agents. To pre-empt the question that's likely on most people’s lips (it certainly was on mine): no, the gunpowder isn't dangerous. Or so Simpson tells me. The stuff he uses is black gunpowder, a combination of potassium nitrate, sulphur and charcoal that bares no relation to the (poisonous) smokeless varieties used in modern munitions. Not that the addition of gunpowder is a mere parlour trick. As well as the voodoo connection (Simpson: “…a reference to the voodoo ritual of drinking rum, gunpowder, soil from a freshly dug grave and human blood to seal a pledge. In my blend drinkers will have to provide their own blood.”) mixing gunpowder and alcohol and setting it alight was an old-fashioned way of testing a spirit’s proof.

If you’re curious but not quite ready to drop the 150-ish doubloons for a full bottle at IBS, a few bars – The Classroom and Ezra Pound – carry it, or should once stock lands on Perth shores. If you're just outright curious, there’s more reading here (the material for this post comes from email exchanges with Simpson while researching my piece last year) plus you can get at the salty dogs via Twitter and their website, too.