bali bali

1 1/2 oz Red Ronrico Rum (Blackbeard Spiced Rum)
1/2 oz Passion Fruit Syrup (Trader Tiki)
1/2 oz Lime Juice
1/4 barspoon Sugar (Turbinado)

Stir the sugar in with the lime juice until dissolved. Add rest of ingredients, shake with ice, and strain into a 10 oz Highball glass. Fill with fresh ice (crushed ice would have been more space filling than cubes) and decorate with mint, cherries, and a straw.

For a cocktail on Saturday night a week and a half ago, I was leafing through the pages of the 1940 cocktail book, The How and When, and spotted the small section of Tiki drinks including the Pago Pago that I had at the Franklin's Chartreuse night (apparently, this book has the earliest published recipe for the drink). Next to it was the Bali Bali which would make good use of our newly acquired bottle of Trader Tiki's passion fruit syrup. We were a little confused as to what "Red Ronrico Rum" would be like as it is a defunct part of that distillery's portfolio. Andrea discovered in her search that it was a dark Puerto Rican rum. Since we do not have any regular dark rums from that island (and we were not sure if their rums got much darker than gold), I figured it would be also be a good time to crack open a rum sample that had been sent to us. The Blackbeard Spiced Rum was reasonably dark and was from the correct island; while Red Ronrico was surely not the same, the Blackbeard seemed like a decent substitution for this drink.
The Bali Bali's mint garnish contributed greatly to the drink's nose. The rum's richness coupled rather well with the passion fruit syrup's smoothness. Meanwhile, the rum's sharpness along with the lime juice's bite did a decent job of drying out the passion fruit syrup's sweetness that was supplemented by the sugar. Finally, the Blackbeard contributed a light spice note on the swallow that added a little extra zest that was probably absent in the Red Ronrico version.