pompadour

1/2 St. James Rhum (1 1/2 oz J.M. Rhum Ambre)
1/2 Pompadour Pineau des Charentes (1 1/2 oz Chateau de Beaulon)
Juice 1/4 Lemon (1/2 oz)

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. I added a lemon twist.

Two Fridays ago, we wanted to make use of our new purchase of a bottle of Pineau des Charentes. Pineau is a fortified wine that is a blend of grape must and Cognac eau de vie which is then aged in oak barrels; the end result is sweet and full bodied and often drank as an aperitif. For a recipe, I chose the Pompadour from Frank Meier's 1934 The Artistry Of Mixing Drinks which pairs the Pineau with an aged rhum agricole and balances its sweetness with lemon juice. It might seem odd that a drink created in France would use rum as the base spirit, but Meier was an American who traveled to Europe to continue his trade during Prohibition, and the rum he used was made in the French colony of Martinique.
With the format of rum, sweet fortified wine, and citrus, the Pompadour reminded me of the Fig Leaf, but the lemon and Pineau took the drink in a very different direction than the Fig Leaf's lime and sweet vermouth. The Pompadour's nose contained citrus notes with a little bit of brininess from the rhum agricole. The Pineau des Charentes' wine flavors entered into both the sweet lemony sip and the dry, funky rum-containing swallow. The Pineau performed a great job of balancing both the lemon's crispness and the rhum's hogo notes; moreover, without the Pineau, I doubt that rhum agricole and lemon would have worked together as superbly.