Rum Collins

 In 1934, only one year after the repeal of prohibition in the United States, former bootlegger Don Beach went straight, opened a successful chain of restaurant bars and invented the faux tropical style of cocktail known now as the tiki drink.

Usually based on citrus juices, spices and rum (which was far cheaper than whiskey due to an over-stock on the part of rum runners no longer profiting from the nation's "great experiment"), the tiki drink owed more to the punches, flips and sangarees of the pre-prohibition hey day than the simpler and certainly more spartan Martini and Manhattan cocktails people had been imbibing during the so-called "dry years".  With sweeter, more complex flavors and a new faux island exoticism to market it, the tiki drink ushered in a new class of cocktail drinkers.

To the martini crowd, this new class of drinker must have seemed trendy, inelegant and, frankly, lacking in good taste or sense. I imagine they felt about the tiki drinking crowd then much as I do now about the good folks who, I will assume because they don't know any better (or are 12), swill cotton candy "martinis" and "mud slides" in places like TGIFriday's. "Snobbery," as M says in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, "is a curious thing."

By the time Emilio Largo offers James Bond a Rum Collins in the film version of Thunderball, these two group definitions were well established and, in a world where James Bond can tell a moral weakness in a man's soul just by what he drinks (as he does when Kristatos orders a Brandy Alexander in the short story Risico), a Rum Collins goes a long way to telling 007, as well as the more sophisticated members of the audience, that Largo, while dangerous, is by no means made of the stern, steely eyed stuff that is James Bond.

The Tom or John Collins is a fine tall gin based drink dating well back into the 1800's but I believe the the tiki fad (which was in full swing in the early 1960's, lasted more than 40 years and, after finally going dark in the 1980's, is enjoying a well deserved come back) popularized the substitution of rum over gin. Of course, there is another, perhaps more immediate connotation; the Rum Collins is a drink popular in Cuba, then as now, a predominantly communist nation and Thunderball takes place in the heart of cold war. By offering Bond a Rum Collins, Largo is revealing himself, if not as the enemy, then certainly as "the other".

The recipes for the Rum Collins are many, some dictating as much as 1.5 ounces of lime juice (which is great if you want to turn your mouth into a kind of ceviche but not for this drink) while others recommend 3 ounces of rum which is more than any other ingredient could hope to bring into balance.

Here is the most palatable of the recipes I tried. Shake with ice:

• 2 oz. white rum (I used Cruzan)
• .5 oz. freshly squeezed lime juice
• 1.5 oz. simple syrup (or super fine sugar)

Strain into an ice filled tall (10 oz.) Collins glass, top with soda water, stir lightly and garnish with a cherry and a lime wheel.

This makes a drink that is probably as refreshing and forgettable in the Nasau heat as one might crave. It is slightly sweet, slightly tart with a very faint rum flavor that is all but obscured by the lime and the sugar. It isn't bad; it's just unremarkable.

A delightful twist on the Rum Collins that takes a slice out of the tiki culture and one which James Bond and Ian Fleming almost certainly would have disapproved of is to shake with ice:

• 1 oz. dark, aged rum (I used Lemon Hart 80 proof)
• 1 oz. light rum (Cruzan as before)
• .5 oz. fresh lime juice
• (Replace the sugar with) 1.5 tsp. Fee Brothers' Falernum
• a dash of Angostura aromatic bitters

Strain, top with club soda and serve as above. The dark rum adds flavor and body while the falernum adds sweetness, spice and the kind of interesting tropical funk one might imagine at the bottom of a chest full of lost treasure. The bitters help bring it all home into one deliciously balanced, albeit tiki influenced, cocktail. The rum and lime finally frolic the way they were always meant to while the spices add a kind of interest that keeps your palette just puzzled enough that you keep coming back for more.

This drink makes a pleasant afternoon in the back yard with friends into an evening of hilarious entertainment if, like Emilio Largo and myself, you keep sharks in your swimming pool.

Cheers!

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For more information on Don Beach and the tiki culture he started and helped create as well as many amazing cocktail recipes thought lost to the winds of time, buy yourself a copy of Sippin' Safari by Jeff "Beach Bum" Berry.