A short, stirred rum cocktail with peach liqueur, sweet vermouth and bitters. Think of it as a rum Manhattan with stone fruit in place of the cherry — aromatic, dry and entirely spirit-forward.
Ingredients:
- 1 oz Bombarda Culverin
- 1 oz peach liqueur
- 1/2 oz sweet vermouth
- 2 dashes Angostura bitters
Method of Attack:
- In a mixing glass half-filled with ice cubes, combine all the ingredients.
- Stir well — thirty seconds, not five. Stirred drinks need the dilution.
- Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
About This Recipe:
Scurvy killed more sailors in the age of sail than storms, shipwreck and enemy action put together. James Lind ran his trial aboard HMS Salisbury in 1747 — twelve sick men, six treatments, and the pair given oranges and lemons recovered while the rest did not. It still took the Admiralty nearly fifty years to issue citrus as standard.
The name is a sailor's joke. There is not a scrap of citrus in this drink.
Why this rum:
Stirred drinks are unforgiving. There is no shaking, no aeration, no juice — just spirits in the glass, so any sweetness is fully exposed. Peach liqueur and sweet vermouth are already doing that job, and a sweetened rum on top of them makes the drink syrupy.
Culverin is a 5 to 8 year blend from Barbados, the Dominican Republic and Panama. It is dry, golden and finishes on cracked pepper, which is exactly the counterweight this needs. No added sugar, no caramel colorant, no chill filtration.
Battle Notes:
Open your vermouth, refrigerate it, and use it within a month. Oxidised vermouth is the single most common reason a stirred cocktail tastes dull at home.
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