The Zombie: Not Just The Walking Dead

Normally, I wouldn’t go for a drink so well known.  You may or may not have noticed I like to revive antiquated recipes, no longer common in the eye of the public.  However, very recently, the Zombie was involved in a night out that a few of my downTown peeps happened to be at.  Consequently, I am inspired to write about it.  Also, it’s the sort of drink that gets you drunk.  Not ha-ha drunk.  Fall down trying to fight the ground drunk.  And, well, that’s how I like it.

The Zombie, according to legend, was created in the late 1930’s, by one Ernest Raymond Beaumont-Gannt, known in popular culture as “Donn Beach”.  The story goes that he put one of these together for a friend of his before he took of for San Francisco. The friend proceeded to pound three of them, and, upon his return, stated he felt like a zombie his entire trip.  And a star is born.

The zombie really hit it’s stride during the days of the American Tiki craze.  Several variants of the original cocktail appeared, as Donn Beach was terribly secretive about his cocktail creations.  After the death of Tiki in popular culture, one of the only ways to find this drink was to guzzle as many as you could get your hands on during Mardi Gras.  These days it’s a little easier, especially if you live in our neck of the woods.  Eastern Standard is known to have the Zombie on it’s menu, with a strict limit of two per customer.  Take a look at the ingredient list and you’ll see why.

2 oz dark rum
2 oz light rum
1 oz 151 (or any over-proof rum)
1 oz triple sec
1 teaspoon Pernod
1 oz lime juice
1 oz orange juice
1 oz pineapple juice
1 oz guava nectar
1 tablespoon Grenadine
1 tablespoon Orgeat (almond) syrup

You can serve this one of two ways, depending on how you like your drinks.  The first method involves tossing all the ingredients into a blender with a bunch of cracked ice and blending until smooth.  Pour your slurry into a Collins glass and garnish with a pineapple spear and a cherry and you’re ready to get rocked.

If you’re not into blender drinks, simply substitute a shaker for the blender and leave out the 151.  Give the concoction a good shake and pour that into a glass.  Float the 151 on top and garnish.  The cool part is that if you’re up to it, you can always light the 151 on fire and serve it that way.  I’m more of a blender guy, but Lupec loves it when I mix up some flaming drinks, and with the ladies I aim to please.

You can find any number of alternate ways to mix this up online, so go nuts. Seriously though, this is going to get you smashed, so be careful.  If you’re not careful though, send me an email with your horror story.  I would love to hear them.

-Out.

Tags: drink recipes, grenadine, pernod, rum, triple sec
Category: Cocktail Recipes | Comments (1)

Ron Matusalem Gran Reserva

What is rum?  Ostensibly, it is a spirit distilled from sugarcane by-products, such as molasses.  But what is the spirit of rum?  Is it that of Hemingway, sitting on a beach, guzzling Cuba Libre after Cuba Libre, staring down the barrel of a shotgun, never knowing years later he would finally pull the trigger in the blasted lands of Idaho?  Perhaps the spirit of rum lives in the urban hipster, sipping a mojito and trying to forget how to smile.  Maybe it’s all of those things.  Maybe it’s none.  I do know this however:  rum has suffered a bad rap through the years.  It is viewed as a party spirit, more built for mixing than for sipping and enjoying.  This perception has started to recede in recent times, with fine rums finally being seen in bars and on shelves in stores.  Today we discuss quite possibly my favorite rum, Ron Matusalem Gran Reserva.

In the early 1870’s a pair of brothers set sail from Spain to Cuba to establish a rum distillery.  Utilizing a closely guarded recipe in combination with the Solera system of blending, Benjamin and Eduardo Camp partnered with Evaristo Álvarez to create the Matusalem brand in 1872.  They derived the name from the Spanish proverb ” Esto es mas viejo que Matusalem”, which translates to “It’s older than Methuselah.”

Over the next nintey years, the Matusalem brand grew as Cuban rum gained popularity throughout the world.  However, in the early 1960’s, after the family was forced to flee Cuba, the brand began to fragment and stagnate. It wasn’t until the mid 90’s, after a furious legal battle, that the current head of the family, Dr. Claudio Álvarez Salazar, was able to begin re-establishing Matusalem as both a quality spirit and worldwide brand.  Today, from the Dominican, using the old Cuban recipe, they are once again putting out fantastic rum.

After all that rambling, I will talk about the Matusalem 15 year Gran Reserva.

Matusalem 15 is aged in French oak casks and blended using the Spanish Solera system.  It pours a lovely honey color, with notes of molasses, vanilla and caramel in the nose.  The taste is incredibly mellow, bringing more of the vanilla and caramel to the table, with nearly no burn on the backend.  A perfect sipping rum, Matusalem also makes the best Dark & Stormy you will ever taste.  This is one of the best examples of a high end rum I have ever encountered, easily being in the head of the pack of the sipping rum world. As rum continues to garner respect in the spirits community, Matusalem will almost certainly be at the forefront of the movement.

-Out.

Tags: cuba, reviews, rum, solera, the dominican
Category: Spirit Reviews | Comments (0)