The Provisions

• 2 oz Rhum JM Terroir Volcanique (aged agricole)
• 1 bar-spoon cane syrup (or 1 tsp turbinado sugar dissolved in a splash of warm water)
• 1 disc of fresh lime — the écorce: peel with a thin sliver of pulp attached
• Garnish: that same lime disc, floating

The Method

1. Pour the cane syrup into a chilled old-fashioned glass.
2. Press the lime disc gently with the back of a barspoon — just enough to release the oils. Do not muddle. Bartenders in Fort-de-France will scowl.
3. Pour the agricole rhûm over the top.
4. Stir twice with a long bar-spoon. Serve neat, no ice (traditional). A modern concession: one small ice cube. Drink it the moment it’s built.

Glassware · Garnish

Small old-fashioned or a footed Martinique punch glass if you have one. The garnish is the lime disc itself — no wedge, no twist, no umbrella.

The Legend

The Ti’ Punch (short for petit punch) is the everyday drink of Martinique — the way a New Yorker drinks a Manhattan or a Roman drinks a Negroni. It predates tiki by a century. The unspoken rule at any Martinique bar: the bartender hands you the rhûm, the syrup, and a lime, and you build it yourself. The saying is “chacun prépare sa propre mort” — each person prepares their own death. It is intentionally undiluted, intentionally short, and intentionally about the rhûm. Rhum JM — named for Jean-Marie Martin, who began distilling on the slopes of Mont Pelée in the 1840s — sits one ridge over from the volcano whose 1902 eruption killed 30,000 people in nearby Saint-Pierre. The cane has been growing back on that ash ever since.

Source: Smuggler’s Cove (Martin Cate); Beachbum Berry, Sippin’ Safari; Modern Caribbean Rum (Matt Pietrek, Wonkpress).

The Provisions

• 1 ½ oz Smith & Cross Traditional Jamaica Rum
• ½ oz Aperol
• ½ oz Giffard Crème de Mure (blackberry liqueur)
• ½ oz John D. Taylor’s Velvet Falernum
• ¾ oz fresh lime juice
• Garnish: lime wheel and a fresh blackberry on a long cocktail pick

The Method

1. Combine all five liquids in a cocktail shaker with cubed ice.
2. Shake hard for 10 seconds. The Smith & Cross is heavy — you want full integration.
3. Double-strain into a chilled coupe.
4. Garnish: rest the lime wheel on the rim and a fresh blackberry on a pick across the top. If you’re feeling theatrical, balance the pick on the rim so the blackberry hangs over the glass like a chandelier prism.

Glassware · Garnish

Coupe, chilled. No ice in the glass — the drink wants to be tasted neat. Garnish is two pieces of fruit, no fuss.

The Legend

Chris Hannah developed the Bywater at Arnaud’s French 75 bar in the French Quarter sometime around 2010, naming it for the Bywater neighborhood just downriver. It was one of the first “new-school tiki” drinks to acknowledge that Smith & Cross belongs in a coupe as readily as it belongs in a pilsner full of crushed ice. The proportions are spec-for-spec a daiquiri variant — rum, sweetener, lime — but the sweetener is split four ways across Aperol, Crème de Mure, and falernum. The result is the kind of drink that makes you check the menu twice. Hannah has since said in interviews that he was trying to make “a daiquiri that didn’t taste like a daiquiri.” Mission accomplished, and on the road to becoming the defining modern New Orleans rum drink.

Source: Chris Hannah at Arnaud’s French 75 (New Orleans); featured in Modern Caribbean Rum (Wonkpress); now a fixture at False Idol and Lost Lake.

The Provisions

• 1 oz El Dorado 8 Year Demerara Rum
• 1 oz Smith & Cross Traditional Jamaica Rum
• 1 oz Ron del Barrilito Two Star (Puerto Rican aged column)
• ¾ oz fresh white grapefruit juice
• ¾ oz fresh lime juice
• 1 oz Donn’s Mix #2* — see note below
• 1 oz chilled soda water
• Garnish: an ice cone with a hole bored through the middle for a long straw, plus a fresh mint sprig. (Substitute: a generous mound of crushed ice with a long straw and the mint laid on top.)

*Donn’s Mix #2 = 3 parts honey, 1 part hot water. Whisk in a small bowl until fully dissolved. Keeps for a week in the fridge. Honey is one of the pantry items you have on hand. If you’re feeling craft-tiki, sub ½ oz of your Bärenjäger for the honey mix and add ½ oz of plain water — same effect with a little more lift.

The Method

1. If you’re making the ice cone: the night before, pack crushed ice firmly into a snow-cone cup or a tall pilsner glass and freeze it. The next day, run warm water over the outside to release. Use a chopstick or wooden skewer to bore a hole through the center for a straw. This is the canonical Don the Beachcomber garnish.
2. Combine the three rums, both fresh juices, and Donn’s Mix in a shaker with 4–6 oz of crushed ice.
3. Flash-shake for 5 seconds — just until cold. The crushed ice should be partly intact.
4. Open-pour (ice and all) into a chilled double old-fashioned or pilsner glass.
5. Top with the chilled soda water.
6. If you made the ice cone: settle it on top, hole-side up, with a long straw threaded through. If not: top with fresh crushed ice to mound the surface, place a long straw, and lay the mint sprig across the rim.

Glassware · Garnish

Double old-fashioned (8-10 oz) or a chilled pilsner. The ice cone is the famous garnish — Donn the Beachcomber used to freeze them in tin cones — but a generous crushed-ice mound with a long straw conveys the same idea. The straw is non-negotiable: this drink is engineered to be sipped slowly while the ice dilutes it down the home stretch.

The Legend

Donn Beach (née Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt) built the Navy Grog in 1941, the year America entered the war, naming it for the British Royal Navy’s daily rum ration — which had by then been tradition for two centuries and would survive another thirty years before the Admiralty discontinued it on “Black Tot Day,” 31 July 1970. Donn’s version, of course, was Hollywood theater rather than military practicality. Three rums, fresh juices, the famous ice cone, and a soft sell of escape from the war news on the front page. The drink has been on the Smuggler’s Cove menu since the day Martin Cate opened the doors in San Francisco in 2009. Beachbum Berry rescued the original spec from Donn’s coded recipe cards in the 1990s — the Beachcomber called the ingredients “Spices #4” and “Don’s Mix” to keep his bartenders from leaving and opening competing bars. (Some of them did anyway. The most famous defector was Trader Vic.)

Source: Donn Beach (1941), reconstructed by Beachbum Berry, Sippin’ Safari (2007); also the canonical version in Smuggler’s Cove (Cate, 2016).