Notes

I don’t spend a lot of my time inventing new cocktails: I like the classics, and appreciate how hard it is to contribute meaningfully to the existing canon. But I’ve come back over and over again to this riff on a rum old fashioned that I created to bring together two of my favorite things: Jamaica’s national rum, Wray & Nephew White Overproof, and crème de banane.

We are currently blessed with two tremendous versions of the latter: Banane du Brésil and Tempus Fugit’s Crème de Banane. They’re different and each is worth having. That means we need more cocktails that use them, so I pulled a basic Mr. Potato Head on an old fashioned: overproof rum for the rye, crème de banane for the sugar/simple syrup, and tiki bitters for angostura.

It would be in the spirit of things to use other interesting Jamaican overproofs, including aged ones. A non-Jamaican rum would be another drink entirely.

It’s named after the 1929 novel by Richard Hughes, which is one of the most disturbing books I’ve ever read. I can’t recommend it highly enough.