Rum cocktails
View all recipesRum comes from sugarcane and carries the Caribbean with it: sweetness, fruit and a warmth that forgives a beginner’s mistakes. It is probably the most forgiving spirit to start making cocktails at home.
A light white rum asks for citrus and mint — that is the Mojito and the Daiquiri. An aged one, with its years in the barrel, holds its own neat or anchors an after-dinner drink without breaking a sweat. Buying both costs little and multiplies what you can make.
7 recipes
Cuba Libre
Rum, cola and lime. It sounds like there is nothing to it, which is why it is served badly everywhere: without enough lime it is another drink, and a worse one.
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Daiquiri
Three ingredients and nowhere to hide: rum, lime and sugar in exact balance. The cocktail bartenders use to measure their own technique.
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Dark 'n' Stormy
The perfect storm in a glass. The contrast between sweet dark rum and spicy ginger beer creates a visual and gustatory spectacle. Born in the Bermuda Islands.
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Mai Tai
Rum, lime, orange curaçao and orgeat, shaken and served over crushed ice. Trader Vic created it in Oakland in 1944, and the name comes from what a Tahitian friend of his exclaimed on tasting it: “maita’i roa ae”, roughly “the very best”. The pineapple-and-grenadine version served in so many hotels is something else.
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Classic Mojito
White rum, mint, lime, sugar and soda, with plenty of ice. It is the drink of Havana, and its simplicity is deceptive: five easy ingredients, but the order you build them in and how you treat the mint decide whether it comes out fresh or bitter.
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Piña Colada
Rum, pineapple and cream of coconut blended until they turn into something close to drinkable ice cream. It dates from 1954, it is the national drink of Puerto Rico, and nearly everything that goes wrong with it comes from mistaking cream of coconut for coconut milk.
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Rum & Tonic
The highball almost nobody orders, and which turns out surprisingly well. The sweetness of the cane and the bitterness of the quinine balance each other on their own, with nothing added to fix it.
View recipe →What to mix with rum
Rum comes from sugarcane, so it arrives sweet by default. Everything that works with it has to bring acidity or bitterness to push back — which is why lime turns up in nearly every classic combination.
Lime and sugar
2 parts rum, 1 lime, 1 syrupThe cleanest formula there is with white rum. Three ingredients and nowhere to hide: if the rum is good you will know, and if it is not, you will know that too.
Daiquiri →Mint, lime and soda
50 ml rum, half a lime, 10 leaves, topped with sodaThe long version of the one above. The mint is not muddled but clapped between your hands: muddled, it releases chlorophyll and turns bitter.
Classic Mojito →Cola and lime
50 ml rum and cola, with half a lime squeezed inIt works because of the lime, not in spite of it. Without citrus it is two sweet things added together; with it, the contrast that holds it up appears.
Cuba Libre →Pineapple and coconut
50 ml rum, 120 pineapple, 60 coconut creamThe fat in the coconut rounds the alcohol and the pineapple brings the acidity. It is one of the few sweet combinations that stands up to an aged rum.
Piña Colada →Tonic water
1 part rum to 2 or 3 parts tonicThe one almost nobody orders. The bitterness of the quinine balances the cane sweetness with no need to add sugar anywhere.
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What does not work:With a good aged rum, steer clear of cola and supermarket juices: you paid for years in barrel that sugar erases in one gulp. Aged rums ask for very little — ice, a strip of orange peel — or for combinations that respect the wood, like pineapple and coconut.
