warning label

1 oz Cynar
1 oz Overproof Demerara Rum (Lemon Hart 151)
1 oz Punt e Mes
1 dash Regan's Orange Bitters
1 dash Grapefruit Bitters (Housemade)

Stir with ice and strain into a cocktail glass rinsed with Campari. Garnish with a lemon twist.

The Capetown's rum notes from the Swedish Punsch tempted me to have another rum cocktail that night. When our unopened bottle of Lemon Hart 151 caught my eye, I decided to find Maksym Pazuniak's Warning Label from Beta Cocktails to give that bottle some use. While the recipe calls for an overproof Demerara rum, I found the El Dorado High Strength Rum to be a little too gasoline like for my tastes. Therefore, I held off on making this recipe until we had a bottle of the Lemon Hart 151 which recently returned to the American market.
The Warning Label began politely with a lemon oil and rich Demerara aged rum aroma that led into a grape and caramel sip. The swallow, however, presented the rum's overproof heat, followed by the Punt e Mes' bitterness, and finally the Cynar's herbalness. Strangely, something in the mix was donating a minty note to the swallow, and we surmised that it was the rum's punch interacting with the Cynar's botanicals. Looking back, I did note a similar combination of rum and Cynar conjuring a mint-like flavor in the Cynar Julep (and perhaps the Art of Choke) as well.