Kaiteur Swizzle

The Kaiteur Swizzle is delicious: tart, refreshing, interesting. The first Kaiteur Swizzle I made I used a lightly aged white rum. However, when I went to make my third, I had almost run out of lightly aged white rum so I used my last ounce and the 1 ounce of a spiced rum that has strong vanilla notes. The two drinks came out very differently (and if you look closely, you cane see the difference in color in the picture). The Kaiteur Swizzle made the the spiced rum was sweeter, though definitely not too sweet. This drink will definitely go into my regular rotation.

A quick word on falernum, which makes it debut on the blog, and definitely sounds like it should be chased with penicillin. Falernum is a sweet liqueur with strong lime zest and ginger flavors and with nuttiness, clove, and vanilla rounding it out. There are multiple brands (John. D. Taylor's is the most common) and you can make your own. As a building block of a cocktail, one should think of falernum as a sweet ingredient first though it adds spice as well as a little alcohol.

Falernum is not really like Cointreau (the other most frequently used liqueur on the blog) but, just for the sake of explaining falernum, I'll compare the two anyway. Falernum is much sweeter than Cointreau, pouring almost like a syrup. Falernum is much less alcoholic than Cointreau, with only 11% ABV compared to Cointreau's 40%. Falernum is more complex than Cointreau. Falernum has multiple flavor notes, I find lime zest and ginger to be the most prominent but it also has allspice, which adds an unmistakable tiki or exotic cocktail flavor that is hard to obtain otherwise. Falernum also has a bitter almond or nut flavor which is akin to the flavor provided by Amaretto in the Castaway.

Kaiteur Swizzle

• 3/4 ounce lime juice
• 1/2 ounce maple syrup
• 1/2 ounce falernum (John D. Taylor's Velevet Falernum)
• 2 ounce rum
• 2 dashes Angostura bitters

Fill glass 3/4 full of crushed ice; pour in lime juice, maple syrup, falernum, rum, and Angostura bitters; swizzle contents until the glass is frosty; top with additional crushed ice; insert a straw; garnish with mint.

h/t: Smuggler's Cove