Barbados? Again?? That’s right. For the second time in 3 weeks I’m taking drinking inspiration from that tiny island in the West Indies. However this one hits a little bit different than the Barbados Cocktail. That one was just rum, falernum and lime, served up in a coupe. This cocktail is a highball, and served in a pint glass. Slightly less formal than its cousin, let’s see if the Barbados Buck can play.

This one comes to us from the Gentleman’s Companion. A fantastic book about early 20th century travel and drinking. I highly suggest picking up a copy.

1 large ice cube

1 jigger (1.5 oz.) Barbados dark rum (any medium dark rum will do)

1 Jigger (1.5oz.) Bacardi

1 small lime, juiced

1 tsp sugar.

Put the ice in a large glass (preferably 16 oz.). Add the rums, lime juice and sugar. Stir and top with ginger ale or beer

The only aroma the drink has is lime. I used half of a lime since the ones I have are by anyone’s definition “not small”. To hedge that bet, I also added a squeeze of lime as a garnish at the end. Which is no doubt the source of the lime scent. Nothing else is present since I assume the ginger ale masks the rums.

The first flavor I get is the lime sourness. I’m thinking I may have gone overboard with the garnish. It’s still very palatable however. After a few seconds of citrus, the two rums start to come through. The Goslings comes through first, with a deeper more concentrated flavor, but then the Bacardi 8 shows up and is very distinct. That rum is brighter and zestier in flavor profile, and while it doesn’t completely cancel out the Goslings, it does overpower it. As to the mixer, I wish I had ginger beer on hand. I think that would go better than ginger ale in this application. The stronger flavor would offset some of the extraneous lime juice I get up front. However, ginger ale does work here. The beer is just a personal preference so your mileage may vary on choice of mixer. I think my blindness to ginger beer comes from my love of Dark & Stormys. The drink finishes nicely as well. The rums carry the ginger ale and lime all the way to the end.

A quick word on the rums in play. As noted above, the recipe calls for “Barbados rum (any medium dark rum will do)” and “the same amount of Bacardi”. Now, when I see dark rum in a recipe, I naturally gravitate towards Goslings and the like. However, in re-reading the recipe, the medium stood out and I wondered if the Bacardi 8 counted as the medium dark rum, and the Bacardi name dropped in the recipe was a white rum. In the end, I just decided to say fuck it and go with it. A) Because those were my rum options, and B) it’s rum, sugar, lime and ginger ale/beer. How bad could it realistically be? The answer to that was clearly “not bad”. By not bad, I also mean tasty and refreshing. I’ll be serving glasses of these over this long weekend ahead of us.

(Banner image found here)