Tropical Punch

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.

Bahama Mama

A Bahama Mama is a long rum punch: 30ml dark rum, 30ml coconut rum and 15ml overproof rum, with 60ml each of pineapple and orange juice, 15ml fresh lime juice and 15ml grenadine, shaken and strained over crushed ice in a hurricane glass. It tastes of coconut, pineapple and orange, and it is stronger than any of that suggests. Its history is loose. The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails places a Bahama Mama at Nassau’s British Colonial Hotel in 1960 and at Trader Vic’s in Beverly Hills in 1961, with neither formula recorded. The Nassau bartender Oswald Greenslade claims to have invented it, Travel Distilled reports, though he started work at the Nassau Beach Hotel in 1961. The fruit-and-coconut punch most bars now pour has no documented creator. A glass holds about 2.8 UK units. Squeeze the citrus the same day and use a grenadine made from pomegranate: in a drink that is mostly juice, the juice decides the result.

Rum Runner

A Rum Runner is a Florida Keys tiki drink: 30ml each of dark and white rum, 15ml each of blackberry and banana liqueur, 10ml grenadine, 15ml fresh lime juice, 45ml pineapple juice and 30ml orange juice, shaken hard and strained over crushed ice in a hurricane glass. A 15ml float of overproof rum is optional. Blended with the ice instead, it becomes the frozen Rum Runner the Keys are known for. The usual account, which Difford’s Guide quotes from the Holiday Isle Tiki Bar’s own site and calls legend, credits the bar’s manager John “Tiki John” Elber with mixing it to clear surplus rum and liqueur before a delivery; the bar took its name in 1971, so the early 1970s is the likely date. That first version had no fruit juice. Pineapple and orange came later and made it the long, fruity drink most bars pour now. It is stronger than it tastes: about 3.0 UK units a glass, 3.9 with the float. Fresh lime and a pomegranate grenadine are what keep it from tasting of boiled sweets.