Trying to get lost at Rumjungle

I've been to Las Vegas a few times since Mandalay Bay opened in 1999, but I'd never made it to Rumjungle, the rum-themed restaurant located next to Red Square, a vodka-themed restaurant with "perestroika-inspired cuisine" and more than 100 vodkas to choose from.

I happened to be in Las Vegas on a quick trip today, and I found myself with a few free hours. So off I went.

Rumjungle sounded tropical, but it's nothing like that at all. No greenery, no Rain Forest Café fauxism. It's all high-tech hipster, with soaring ceilings, lots of glass and chrome, waterwalls accented with fire, and the thump-thump-thump of the sort of electronic music you hear at Miami Beach tee-shirt shops.

I went early, before the beautiful people came out, and I grabbled a seat at the bar, which is a bubbly resin backlit a lime-green color.

Naturally, I was more interested in the rum. My bartender, sadly, was not. He was very pleasant, almost to the point of jovial, but he didn't know much about hundred-plus types of rum they stocked. When I asked what was moving, he confided, "aged rums," because they're supposed to have more flavor. I pressed a bit further, and he said they often served Pyrat and Zaya to people unfamiliar with rum, because that opened their eyes to the possibilities. Well, that was encouraging at least.

When I asked for suggestions about a classic style cocktail made with one of those aged rums he'd heard about, he didn't have any suggestions for me. So I consulted the menu. The good news was that they had lots and lots of rums – starting at $9 per shot, with most about $12 to $14. Many were aged. The bad news was that their cocktail menu was woefully uninspired, with lots of drinks featuring flavored rums (all called "infused rums" on the bar menu), fruit juices and Coco Lopez. I ordered a rum old-fashioned, which was adequately prepared, if a bit heavy on the bitters.

More discouraging to me were the flights of rums. Three variations on Pyrat rum were offered at $65, but most flights were $20 and consisted of four or five samples. For instance, you could get a Captain Morgan flight, a Cruzan flavored rum flight, and a Bacardi flight (Barcardi Limon, O, Anejo, Coco, Vanila). Or, if your tastebuds were that numb, you could go next door and swill vodka.

The best part about Rumjungle was the soaring wall of backlit rum bottles behind the bar. I know this is now a design cliché in the bar world, but I liked seeing all that rum. While sitting bathed in the Martian glow of the bar, I could be a rum tourist, traveling with my eyes from island to island, and distillery to distillery.

Rumjungle: so close, yet so far. It could use a little peristroika.

J.M heads north

Good rums are easier than ever to find in many liquor stores in North America. That's a welcome trend. Now great rums are becoming almost as easy to turn up. That's an even better trend.

Among those newly available: J.M Rhum from Martinique.

I was fortunate enough to visit the J.M distillery in Martinique when researching a story on rum for Saveur magazine last summer. It's a striking place, with its sugar cane grown on the slopes of the volcano just above the distillery, then hauled down by tractor each day during the cutting season. The master distiller, Nazaire Canataous, has been working here since 1972 when he was 17, and is the son of the former master distiller. He's a man who clearly loves his job, and his passion and experience shines through in the product. Perhaps the single best sip of rum of many I had on Martinique was the 15-year-old J.M, and the 10-year old rum was a close runner-up.

The 10-year is now available in the United States. It's a barrel-proof, cask-strength rum that has a touch of sweetness but without burned-sugar notes. Benjamin Jones, who distributes J.m and Clement rums in the United States, says that he compares the Clement with cognac, and J.M with armagnac. I'd have to say that's not just marketing hype, but accurate.

J.M has been in the U.S. markets only since the beginning of this year, and for now can be found largely on the east coast – including most New England markets. It's due to roll out soon in Illinois, Colorado, Arizona, and California.

Look for it. Be pleased.

Rummy affairs

Mark your calendars.

Well, if you've got ample free time, thirst and cash. Over the next several months a number of rum related-events are shaping up nicely. These should help bridge the difficult season between sipping aged rum straight and mojitos bursting with minty goodness.

The International Cane Spirits Festival
This is the second time for this celebration of all things sugar-cane-liquor related, and is slated for Saturday March 24 at the Cuban Club in Tampa, Fla. A great many producers and marketers of rums and cachaças will be in attendance The evening event is $25 (or $50 for the VIP ticket) and includes more rum samples than is probably prudent, music, and the chance to mingle with folks, like, well, me, and the many of the people who make the rum, including Phil Prichard of Tennessee.

Rum Distilling Conference
A week later, March 29 to 31, the American Distilling Institute holds its annual conference in Louisville, Kentucky. This year's focus? Rum! Producers of microdistilled rums (and other spirits) from around the country will descend upon on bourbon country for tours of distilleries and to swap notes about production and marketing. Most of the conference is held at the Huber Starlight Distillery just across the state border in Borden, Ind. On Saturday, I'll be giving a short talk about rum's history.

Tales of the Cocktail
The fifth annual Tales of the Cocktail, held in New Orleans July 18 to 22, will provide ample evidence as to why this has quickly become the preeminent gathering for those interested in cocktails, their history, and their future. Among those giving presentations are Dale DeGroff, Audrey Saunders, Ted Haigh, Ted Breaux, and David Wonderich. I'm running one panel on rum drinks with Stephen Remsberg (the nation's preeminent collector of rums) and Ed Hamilton (Minister of Rum). I'll also be assisting Jeff Berry at his panel on the history of tiki drinks. Want more rum? Ed Hamilton is also running an international rum tasting competition concurrent with Tales, leading an illustrious group of judges in search of the best rums. Winners will be announced on Saturday night.

At last year's event I found myself walking down Royal Street late one morning sipping a go-cup of straight absinthe produced by Ted Breaux at an ancient distillery in France. As moments of utter drink perfection go, that will be hard to beat, but I'm always hopeful. Tales of the Cocktail is wonderful event, an essential stop for anyone who hopes to graduate from cocktail dilettante to serious drinker.

The original mai tai, at a price

The Merchant Hotel in Belfast is a true cocktailian bar - even the ice is "hand-cut" from pure water imported from Fiji. It has offered the "original" Trader Vic's mai tai (made with Appleton VX and Myers' rum) for some time, but now has an optional upgrade: a more original original mai tai made with seventeen-year-old Wray & Nephew rum, the very rum Vic Bergeron specified in his account of how he invented the drink:

"I took down a bottle of 17-year-old rum. It was J. Wray Nephew from Jamaica; surprisingly golden in color, medium bodied, but with the rich pungent flavor particular to the Jamaican blends. The flavor of this great rum wasn't meant to be overpowered with heavy additions of fruit juices and flavorings."

For a time, many thought Vic's story was spurious (a made-up story involving the invention of a cocktail? How could that be?). Rum collector Stephen Remsberg was among the doubters. "I've been picking up price lists from early part of century, and I would have sworn to you six months ago that he was just blowing smoke, because special reserve has never been anything other than 15 year old rum," he told me during my research of the book. But then he turned up a list of rums stocked by Vic's rival Don the Beachcomber, which included a specially bottled 17-year-old Wray & Nephew reserve. How Vic got hold of a bottle is unclear, but they did exist. That lent his story some credibility.

Now, the mai tai served over in Northern Ireland isn't actually from a vintage bottle. It's newly produced special reserve aged 17 years, with just six bottles issued. The price of a single cocktail? £750, or about $1,500. (And it's made with a miserly 1.3 ounces of rum.) The price makes it, according to the Guinness Book people, the most expensive cocktail in the world. (The hotel reports, without bias, "those lucky enough to sample this cocktail have confirmed that it was worth every penny!")

This mai tai evidently displaces the world's formerly most-expensive tipple: The Ritz Sidecar ($500), served at the Hemingway Bar of the Hotel Ritz in Paris and featuring 1865 Ritz Fine Champagne. It's unclear why the Dazzle Cocktail – served in Manchester, England, and featuring a six and a half carat pink tourmaline and diamond ring in lieu of an olive ($30,500) – is not considered the most expensive. Perhaps baubles disqualify.

Also, despite the hotel's claim above, I've seen no actual reports on whether an actual anyone has actually ordered one of these drinks. If so, it might offer an interesting avenue of investigation: perhaps money can be more injurious to your brain and judgment than even drinking.

Link

Pama Presidente

I like Pama, the (relatively) new pomegranate liqueur produced by Heaven Hill. It's not overly sweet like so many liqueurs, it has a pleasing berry-like tartness to it, and it nicely captures the essense of pomegrante, which mass market grenadines often fail to do. So it seemed worth experimenting with in cocktails.

Naturally, the first drink I turned to was El Presidente, the popular Cuban cocktail from the Prohibition era. (I wrote up a history of it for Lost Magazine that appears here.) it's made with rum, vermouth, curaçao, and a dash of pomegrante. I've been using pomegranate molasses for a while, since it has a robustness to the taste that I really enjoy. But with a bottle of Pama on my shelf, I started playing around.

And it works nicely. My tastes tend toward tart (although I don't go for the full Hemingway – he liked his daiquiries with lime juice and no sugar), and by not using sweet grenandine you get more pomegranate, less sugar toothache.

Give it a try. I made several versions, but here's the one I liked best:

2 oz. aged rum
1/2 oz. curaçao
3/4 oz. dry vermouth
1/2 oz. Pama liqueur

Combine in mixing glass with ice and stir until chilled. Strain into a cocktail glass.