Royal Bermuda Yacht Club

A hard twist on the Daiquiri.

After discovering the Daiquiri No.1, I (like many before me) quickly began making slight alterations to the classic mix of rum, lime and sugar. Mostly just switching out different types of rum at first but then I began switching out different syrups for the sugar component. about one out of 20 times I'll come across something that I like enough to warrant writing down. It's at this point that I start researching a bit as if it's good and made from classic Tiki ingredients, odds are, it's already a recorded drink. This is how I found the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club.

The drink is essentially a daiquiri that uses falernum instead of simple syrup. It also adds in a bit of orange curaçao to keep the sweetness of the falernum in check. The choice of rum, of course, makes the drink what it is.

Trader Vic's Bartender's Guide (both 1947 & 1952) recommend a Barbados rum. For my taste this usually means Mount Gay or Plantation Barbados. The only other refernce to the cocktail in my library is in Tiki - Modern Tropical Cocktails y Shannon Mustipher where she recommends Hamilton 86 Demerara rum. The Hamilton 86 is a blend of 5 year old demerara rum and Jamaican rums. For some reason, Hamilton rums are incredibly hard to find in Tennessee. As a result I've not tried the Hamilton 86 but understand it to be an 86 proof bottling of the Hamilton 151 which was designed to be a replacement for the Lemon Hart 151 which was temporarily unavailable in the USA. Given that, I tried this drink with both the Lemon Hart 1804 and with the El Dorado 5 year since Hamilton 86 sources its Demerara rum from El Dorado distiller DDL. All are good but I think I prefer the Lemon Hart 1804. I'll update the post if I ever get my hands on a bottle of Hamilton 86...

As for the orange curaçao, well given its use in the Mai Tai there are no shortage of opinions on brands. Trader Vic recommends Cointreau while Mustipher recommends Marie Brizard. I'm using Grand Marnier and/or Pierre Ferrand. It really comes down to where you fall on the bitter to sweet scale of orange curaçao.

While this is technically a daiquiri, it's about as far as you can get from the incredible neutrality of the original Daiquiri No.1. (not that there's anything wrong with that...) This guy's bold with a full, round mouthfeel. The Royal Bermuda Yacht Club isn't here to neutralize your rum and slip it into your bloodstream. It's here to celebrate the essence of good aged rum with the spices that compliment it best.