air mail

1/2 oz Matusalem Platino Rum
1/2 oz Lime Juice
1/2 oz Honey Syrup

Shake with ice and strain into a white wine glass. Top off with Brute d'Argent Blanc de Blanc sparkling wine and garnish with an orange twist.

For my second drink on Sunday night, I asked bartender Derric Crothers to make me an Air Mail. The Air Mail was one of the drinks I have sort of had, which sounds odd until I explain that it was for the Mixology Monday: Hard Drinks for Hard Times. For that theme, we made some champagne cocktails rather inexpensively using beer instead of sparkling wine of any sort. Three of the drinks in that post were successes, but the Air Mail with Heineken Light (someone beer-bombed us at one of our parties so we had a bunch) was rather atrocious. While Heineken Light worked rather well with the lemon-based French 75 variant, it worked horribly with the lime-based Air Mail. Therefore, I needed to try the drink done properly.

The Air Mail's nose was full of honey and citrus due to the effervescence of the sparkling wine volatilizing aromas into the air. The drink's sip was rather crisp from the champagne and the lime juice and was full of citrus notes. The white rum provided some heat but not a lot of flavor; many recipes call for more flavorful amber rums which might bring the spirit closer to the forefront of the profile. Lastly, the honey donated a slight funkiness to the drink, but it lost in the sweet-dry balance battle given the other ingredients in the mix.