No, it’s not the Dark & Stormy.

Though you could be forgiven for thinking that, based on the headline and on that notation on the calendar that today is Mixology Monday, which happens to be hosted this month by RumDood, who has chosen Ginger for this month’s theme. So, ginger plus rum (minus the dood), plus some boilerplate meteorological bally-hoo in the introduction? Surely I’m leading up to Gosling’s & Barritt’s, right? The classic Dark & Stormy? Or some close approximation, correct?

Eh….maybe. I came across this drink a little over a year ago, while working on the cover feature for the July/August 2008 issue of Imbibe, about liqueurs. One of the products I was covering was the relatively new (or newly reformulated, depending on how you look at it) Domain de Canton ginger liqueur. Desperate for a new and, above all, tasty use of the liqueur, I sent a feeler e-mail out to my good friend Jim Meehan at PDT in New York. Jim pointed me to a colleague of his, Tona Palomino, who was managing the bar at WD-50, and Tona unleashed this drink on me.

Noting that the Stormy Weather is a spin-off of the classic Dark & Stormy, Palomino told me how he swapped Domain de Canton for the ginger beer in that drink, matching it against a good, rich, vanilla-heavy rum like Angostura 1919. For complexity and a peculiar alchemical property, he added a hearty dose of Carpano Antica vermouth, which contributes a firm foundation of flavor but also interacts with the ginger notes in the liqueur. With a touch of effervescence from a splash of soda water, the Stormy Weather is somewhat like a mature version of the Dark & Stormy, though as I’ve continued to enjoy these over the past year I’ve come to view the Stormy Weather as something like a worldly Cuba Libre, due to that interaction of ingredients that produces a flavor I can only describe as cola-like.

Here’s Palomino’s recipe, which I included in my Imbibe piece last summer. One note: as listed, this makes a fairly large drink. You can easily scale it back by nudging the rum back to 1 1/2 ounces and the vermouth and liqueur to 3/4 ounce; scale back the bubble water accordingly, but don’t skip the lime twist — those bitter oils provide another layer of complexity to an already blammo drink.

Stormy Weather

• 2 ounces amber rum (Palomino recommends Angostura 1919; I typically use Bacardi 8 to good effect)
• 1 ounce Carpano Antica vermouth
• 1 ounce Domain de Canton ginger liqueur
• 1/2 ounce soda water

Combine first three ingredients in a mixing glass and stir well with ice. Strain into a double old-fashioned glass filled with fresh ice. Cut a thin piece of lime peel and twist over the drink; discard. Add club soda and lightly stir.

I keep coming back to this one, especially during the warm months. To see what other kinds of ginger goodness folks are mixing up this Mixology Monday, head over to RumDood‘s place for his roundup post.

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Tags: Drinks, Mixology Monday, Rum, Vermouth by Paul
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Almost a year and a half ago, after straying across a mention of a prototype spicy chocolate bitters at Cocktail Virgin Slut, I dropped a message to the bitters’ creators to see if somehow, some way, I could take a sample through its paces. Four sample bottles and a couple of explosively good cocktails later, I found myself a Bittermens evangelist, telling every cocktail geek I came across about the durable and versatile flavor of the Xocolatl Mole bitters — I mean Jesus, this stuff was MADE for tequila and rum — and about how the hops in the grapefruit bitters gave the flavor an amazing hang time in a cocktail. (And it wasn’t just me going on about the bitters — the San Francisco Chronicle picked up the story at about the same time.)

The one thing I couldn’t pass along, however, was instructions on how people could try these bitters — Avery Glasser, the creator of Bittermens, was working through the regulatory process, and as the months passed it seemed that Bittermens might never make it to market.

Well, guess what? Here they are. Working in partnership with Stephan Berg and Alexander Hauck at The Bitter Truth — whose bitters I’ve also gushed about before, and who cap the package by being really great guys as well — Bittermens is putting their Xocolatl Mole and Grapefruit bitters into commercial production; the official release is in July, but you can place pre-orders now through The Bitter Truth’s online store. Soon, hopefully, you’ll soon be able to pick up a bottle at a store near you — TBT has been expanding their distribution most impressively — but for now, grab a bottle online so you can try out a Camerone or a Theobroma for yourself — or, maybe, a Bittermens drink created by an actual, y’know, bartender.

It’s about time for these bitters to hit the market — I’m down to my last quarter-ounce of the Xocolatl, and was really getting worried about what I’d do once they ran out.

Wait — you’re still reading? Go on, ORDER ‘EM–

UPDATE: U.S. customers wishing to purchase only a few bottles can avoid paying overseas shipping charges by purchasing from The Boston Shaker (I believe wholesale orders must still go through Germany).

Tags: General by Paul
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I’ll avoid all the obvious XL jokes in this post, because we’re one scant week away from June’s Mixology Monday, which — in case you couldn’t figure it out from the headline — takes place on Monday, June 15.

Hosting this round of MxMo is RumDood over at, yep, RumDood.com. And as you might expect from the blog’s name, for this round’s theme the Dood has chosen … okay, it’s not rum — we’ve already had one of those. So, instead he’s going with the next-best theme: Ginger.

Here’s how to play:

• Find or concoct a cocktail recipe that uses ginger in one of its many forms as an ingredient.  This can be muddled ginger, sliced ginger, ginger syrup, ginger beer (commercial or homemade), ginger liqueur, ginger candy, or pieces of a shredded photo of Ginger from Gilligan’s Island.
• Make this recipe, take a picture of it, and then post the recipe, your thoughts about the recipe, and your photo on your blog or at the eGullet Spirits and Cocktails forum.
• Post a link to your submission in the comments here, or send an email using the “Contact” form.

And that pretty much says it all. So, Monday, June 15, be here in Internet-land with some kind of gingery drink, and inform the host so he’ll know what you’ve been up to. See you then–

Tags: Mixology Monday by Paul
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