This week in Richmond has been a return to the bizarre schizophrenia of East Coast winters: twenty degrees in the morning, sixty in the evening. I walk Telly at seven in the morning dressed in four layers and then find myself wanting a nice refresher at the end of the day, rather than some sort of heavy old fashioned or Manhattan riff.
I stood downstairs in my bar room, browsing my bottle collection and working backwards from dry curacao. I landed on the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club, which splits the difference between a daiquiri and something more traditionally tiki. I love tiki drinks but have been trending away from the saccharine; this seemed intriguing enough to try.
Gang: I was gobsmacked. This is probably my favorite drink I've made since the Rooister Old Fashioned (which, having typed that, reminds me that I need to write it up!). The taste is unquestionably tiki, but stripped down to its skeleton: I used Smith & Cross as the base rum here which gave it a strong backbone to fight off the falernum.
I'm very excited to play with this framework some more. (It also seems incredibly well-lent to batching, come springtime.)