42 Rum Cocktail Recipes

Rum covers more ground than any other spirit, because being made from sugarcane is the only thing its many styles agree on. Light Spanish-style rums are clean and dry and vanish into a Daiquiri or a Mojito. Jamaican pot-still rums are loud with overripe banana and pineapple esters. Rhum agricole and cachaca are pressed from fresh cane juice rather than molasses, and taste grassy and vegetal. Aged and blackstrap rums bring molasses, toffee and smoke. That range explains why tiki drinks so often call for two or three rums at once: no single bottle carries the whole flavour. When a recipe specifies a style it usually matters, and swapping a light rum for a dark one changes the drink rather than merely tinting it. Rum is also the friendliest spirit for lime, sugar and mint, the trio behind half the canon. Get a Daiquiri properly balanced and most of the rest follows.