We picked up a bottle of Plantation Pineapple. It’s very good, though the drink isn’t quite right.
Tasting Notes
Rory: It’s straightforwardly good… I don’t know if I’m going to have a lot of tasting notes. I wish it were a little more complex/deeper but that’s not the daiquiri’s fault, that’s my fault. No daiquiri is going to compare to my memories of oloroso daiquiri, not even a new oloroso daiquiri. Anyway, it’s good.
Going by my feeling that I wanted something like but not a daiquri", I think I would’ve been happier with something that’s a little more spirit forward, maybe? or more complex? something not as sweet and not as sour as this. It feels a little syrupy and overly tart… but drinking just the rum by itself also wasn’t for me (at least not tonight); it wasn’t as sweet as I’d expected. I wonder that something in the vein of an Old Fashioned might’ve been closer to right.
Maybe I just didn’t shake it enough? Too tart and too sweet sounds like I underdiluted it by a little bit, now that I think about it. On a different note, I’ve heard that rich (2:1) simple (versus 1:1 simple) has some effects on the texture of a drink, but I’m not eentirely sure.
Ryan: First some notes about the rum, which we had a small sip of straight. There’s a strong pineapple smell. Taking a sip, there’s a sort of undertone of pineapple–not just fruit, but a lot of unripe pineapple or pineapple skin–it tastes how the outside of a pineapple smells. on top of that, there’s more tradition rum notes–warm spices, burnt sugar. The finish is pretty sweet, and the pineapple lingers a bit.
On to the drink. this is straightforwardly good, and uncomplicated. I don’t really have much to say about it–it’s a very, very good daiqiri. The pineapple shows up nicely; the citrus is well balanced, and so on. Generally the recommendation is to keep Plantation Pineapple drinks relatively simple and show off the rum–I think I agree, but I do want to add a bit more complexity in there; some allspice dram or bitters would do well, as would syrups with a bit more going on.
Recipe
- 2 oz Plantation Stiggins Fancy Pineapple Rum
- 3⁄4 oz lime juice
- 1⁄2 oz rich simple syrup (2:1)
Shake with ice and strain into a chilled coupe.
Source: Smuggler’s Cove