Thursday, May 28, 2009

demerara smash

2 oz Renegade Guyana 16 Yr. Rum
1 oz Yellow Chartreuse
Lemon Wedges (~1/3 lemon)
Lime Wedges (~1/2 lime)
Mint

Muddle lemon, lime, and mint. Add rum and Chartreuse with ice and shake. Double strain through regular and tea strainer into a rocks glass filled with crushed ice. Garnish with mint, and add a pair of straws.

On Monday night, Andrea and I decided to go out to Eastern Standard after figuring that Sunday would be too crowded most places due to the holiday and thus stayed in. For one of my cocktails, I asked Nicole Lebedevitch for a drink with the Renegade Rum that Hugh had introduced me to last time. We eventually came up with the idea of a rum-Chartreuse smash which Nicole seemed rather excited about making.
The drink had a lot of mint aroma hovering over the top from the garnish. Tastewise, the rum provided a pleasant funky and smoky flavor with the right amount of hogo notes from the pot stilling. The complex rum was aided by the botanicals in the Chartreuse which also served as the main source of sweetness for this rather dry drink. The equal parts of lemon and lime gave some extra depth than either citrus would have alone. Moreover, the citrus worked well with the Chartreuse liqueur and provided a crisp bite that faded on the sip.

2 comments:

Tranberg said...

I'm a big fan of twisting the original mojito into something new, and this looks like a very fine one! How important do you find that exact Rum vs. some other good Rum?

frederic said...

My recipe only represents the drink that was made for me by the bartender.

Feel free to substitute another Demerara rum if you have one (Renegade is rather pricey so a substitution is recommended unless you have a large home bar budget). Otherwise, use whatever rums you have that might be a close match or might be interesting in there. A gold rhum agricole, an intriguing rum like Zacapa, or other pop into my head as good choices. And other liquors such as pisco or cachaça might work as well.