The Expedition Punch

The Old Standard

The Old Standard is 50ml of Expedition Spiced Rum, 10ml of demerara syrup, two dashes of Angostura and one of orange bitters, stirred in a mixing glass for 20 to 30 seconds and strained over a single large cube or fresh cubed ice in a rocks glass, with a wide strip of orange peel expressed over the top. About 2.1 UK units: 2.0 from the rum and about 0.1 from the bitters. It is our rum Old Fashioned. The format is spirit, sugar, water and bitters, the parts in the first definition of a cocktail known to be an alcoholic drink, which the Oxford Companion dates to a Hudson, New York, newspaper of 1806, and with nothing else in the glass it shows the spirit plainly. Two changes follow from the rum. Demerara syrup replaces white sugar, because its caramel meets the vanilla and oak. Orange bitters join the Angostura, to lift the orange peel already in the rum at the nose. Everything else is the Old Fashioned, measured.

Jerry Can Julep

The Jerry Can Julep is 60ml of Expedition Spiced Rum, eight to ten fresh mint leaves pressed lightly with 10ml of simple syrup, and a dash of Angostura over a glass packed with crushed ice, finished with a mint bouquet and, if you like, an expressed orange peel. About 2.4 UK units. It is our julep. The Mint Julep is usually bourbon, but the format is older and looser than that, and the Oxford Companion describes nineteenth-century juleps made with French brandy, peach brandy, wines and Dutch gin as well as whisky. Spirit, sugar, mint and a great deal of crushed ice is all it asks. Expedition Spiced Rum suits it because its vanilla and cinnamon are warm where mint is cool. The syrup stays at 10ml because the rum brings sweetness of its own, and the Angostura goes on top of the ice, where it meets the mint at the nose.

Planter’s Punch

Planter’s Punch is 45ml of Jamaican rum, 15ml of fresh lime juice and 30ml of sugar cane juice, poured into a small tumbler, diluted to taste with water, ice or fresh juice, and finished with orange zest. The measures follow the IBA. About 1.8 UK units. It belongs to the punch family of the old rhyme, one of sour, two of sweet, three of strong, four of weak, and it is the Jamaican member: a dark, full-flavoured island rum, lime and sugar. The IBA writes it short and leaves the weak part to you; a longer build that follows the rhyme to the letter is our variation. The Oxford Companion calls it the unofficial drink of Jamaica since the late nineteenth century, and the Charleston City Paper prints a verse from the London magazine Fun of September 1878 that gives the same proportions. Cane juice is the IBA’s sweetener: sweeter than water, far less sweet than syrup, with a green, grassy taste.