Archives for the 'rum' tag
Renaissance of Rum
The New York Times says these hard times deserve a return to hard rum — because rum is the Disney World of liquor:
Some major themes in fashionable bars lately: small, elegant, stemmed glassware; arm garters; house-made bitters; a seriousness that is hard to distinguish from humorlessness; gin.
Some major themes in the Night Marcher, a drink that one owner of the Tar Pit, a bar that will open in Los Angeles later this month, calls “our ambassador”: a large, grimacing tiki mug; bondage gear; store-bought Cholula hot sauce; a sense of humor that is hard to distinguish from weirdness; rum.
Yes — that’s what I said!
My fondness for rum is likewise a recent rediscovery. After college, I took a job at a travel agency thinking it would pay the bills while I fulfilled my ambition of becoming a travel writer. I did do some traveling (in which I learned it interfered with my greater ambition of laying about the house), including several trips to Jamaica. On one of these I picked up a duty-free pack of three 750 ml bottles of rum — gold, silver, and coconut — for the princely sum of $11. Soon after, the contents of all three bottles were consumed by four people in a single evening, resulting in one of those please-God-if-you-exist-strike-me-dead-now hangovers that put me off the stuff for over a decade.
But we’re all older and wiser now, right?
“Everybody still enjoyed rum,” said Audrey Saunders, who in 2005 founded the Pegu Club, an ambitious gin palace where roughly half the noteworthy young bartenders in Manhattan once worked. “But people kind of passed it over for things that were more challenging and difficult to work with.” Now that bartenders have tested their mettle by mixing drinks with the bitterest amaro, however, rum is getting a second look.
“We were all too snobby four years ago,” Ms. Saunders said. “Now it’s a different story. Now it’s like: ‘Oh, I miss that girlfriend. You know what? Those were fun times.’ ”
Adventures in Grilling, Boozing
Having spent my summer grilling and drinking rum, I thought I’d share two recipes useful for outdoor entertaining.
The first is a dry rub for steak that I impulsively whipped together early in the season:
1 Tbsp. granulated brown sugar
1 Tbsp. chili powder
1 Tbsp. curry powder
1/2 tsp. salt
Mix all ingredients and rub into a thin-cut steak. Allow to sit a half-hour or so before grilling. Works best with indirect heat; that is, cooking the steak to the side rather than immediately over the coals. This allows the sugar to glaze over the steak.
The granulated brown sugar is important since regular brown sugar is difficult to spread evenly on the meat, leading to clumping and burning. Also, while McCormick curry powder is fine, I use Oriental Brand Hot Jamaican, which has anise and is heavier on the turmeric, giving it a smokier taste that lends itself to grilling.
The Woman Who Gives Appleton Estate Rum Its Good Taste
If you had to guess whom was the artist behind the Appleton rum blend, you might not guess a fiftysomething woman, right? I wouldn’t. But we’d both be wrong.
Meet Joy Spence, Master Blender and former high school chemistry teacher, who’s currently on tour where the water drains a different way. She’s breaking barriers with every tasty sip, as she describes in a New Zealand Herald interview published today.
How did you become a master rum blender?
I joined the company as a chemist, and had to work very closely with the master blender – who looks at the sensory side of blending – and I had to look at the chemical process. I became very fascinated with the whole idea so I went into training for 17 years, then took over the role of master blender when he retired.
So you don’t just chuck some Bacardi in with the Captain Morgan and see what comes out?
Ah, no.
[...]
Is the position of master blender an unusual one for a woman?
Very strange. It’s a male-dominated profession. I’m the first female in this industry to be a master blender. I am proud. And I didn’t have much difficulty being accepted because they knew me as a chemist and I was being tutored by the master blender. I thought I would be in a lab with beakers and test-tubes, not doing this.
More here. Read Mrs. Spence’s bio at Appleton Estate. Also worthwhile is this previous brief interview.
