stormy mai tai

1 1/2 oz Angostura Bitters
3/4 oz Orgeat (Ferrara Orzata)
3/4 oz Curaçao (Senior Curaçao)
1 oz Lime Juice

Build on crushed ice in a rocks glass and swizzle to mix (shaking with ice and straining into rocks glass filled with crushed ice would be equally as effective). Float light rum (1/2 oz 10 Cane) and garnish with mint.

Every so often, our blog's analytics alerts me that the post on the Trinidad Sour receives traffic from a post Paul Clarke did about the recipe I wrote about. The original was created by Giuseppe Gonzalez when he was a bartender at Brooklyn's Clover Club, and it is a crafty inversion of a standard cocktail formula such that the bitters play a significant role with an ounce of Angostura Bitters. In the comments of Paul's post, Giuseppe left the recipe for an Angostura-heavy companion cocktail, the Stormy Mai Tai, that seemed rather curious and tempting. As an inverse bittered Mai Tai with the rum used as an accent and the bitters used as the base spirit (true, bitters do not appear in the regular Mai Tai), I saved this recipe until our mint patch had returned to full swing and I was up for a challenging drink. For the orgeat, instead of the subtle but very wholesome B.G. Reynolds syrup, I opted for a flavorful but extract-laden syrup from Ferrara since I figured that it needed to stand up to the robust flavors in the mix.
With this much Angostura Bitters in the drink, I was a little afraid to use a wood swizzle stick in fears that it would stain red and I substituted a metal bar spoon as a swizzle instead. The mint garnish contributed greatly to the drink's nose along with hints of the light rum that was lurking underneath the sprigs. The rum float dominated the flavor of the first few sips before the Angostura's cherry notes, the lime juice, and the Curaçao's orange entered into the sip. Finally, the Angostura's spice filled the swallow and were soothed by the orgeat's almond notes.