A long highball of aged rum, sherry, lime and ginger ale. The sherry is the unusual part and the reason it works — it adds a dry, nutty depth that keeps the drink from being just rum and mixer.
Ingredients:
- 1 1/2 oz Bombarda Falconet or Drake
- 1/2 oz dry sherry (amontillado or oloroso)
- 1/2 oz fresh lime juice
- 4 oz ginger ale
- Lemon twist, to garnish
Method of Attack:
- In a shaker half-filled with ice cubes, combine the rum, sherry and lime juice.
- Shake well.
- Strain into a Collins glass almost filled with crushed ice.
- Top with ginger ale and stir once, gently.
- Garnish with a lemon twist.
About This Recipe:
"The devil to pay and no pitch hot." The devil was the longest, most awkward seam in a wooden hull, down where the deck met the side — and paying a seam meant sealing it with hot pitch. Caulking the devil was the worst job on the ship, and doing it without hot pitch ready was worse still. That is where the phrase comes from, and it has nothing to do with debt.
A fitting name for a drink with an awkward ingredient in it. Sherry in a rum highball sounds wrong and turns out to be exactly right.
Why this rum:
Ginger ale is sweeter than ginger beer and considerably sweeter than it tastes. Add a sweetened rum and the sherry disappears entirely, which removes the only interesting thing in the glass.
Falconet, aged 8 to 15 years, has the oak to meet the sherry. Drake is drier and more molasses-forward. Neither carries added sugar, no caramel colorant and no chill filtration.
Battle Notes:
Use crushed ice, not cubes. It dilutes faster, which this drink wants — it is built to be long and easy rather than spirit-forward.
For a similar build with ginger beer and curacao, see Powder Box.
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