Today I’m trying a flavor experiment. I have this bottle of Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur lying around that I’ve been looking for a reason to use. Since Las Vegas (where I live) is hotter than Hades right now I thought about a refreshing tea with a touch of astringent flavor to help fight the heat.

In proper manner for A Taste for Drink, I’m using what I have lying around the house.

I have a bottle of Kirkland Spiced Rum that I bought at Costco. It’s a lovely spiced rum with a hint of vanilla. It’s my go-to rum for my rum and cokes on the weekend. The spice is not very strong, more of a hint.

There’s some lemon juice in the fridge and I’ve got a large bottle of unsweetened iced tea. So let’s get started.

The ginger liqueur’s flavor is a bit heavy handed so I start with 1 part.

The rum will help dillute out the astringency of the ginger so I use 2 parts.

Normally for a mixed drink your mixer should either be equal to or double the amount of alcohol to smooth things out. Considering the potency of the alcohols, I opted for 4 parts iced tea.

Since I want a bit of a lemon taste I added 1/4 part lemon juice. In retrospect I think this drink might be even better by choosing to use 2 parts lemonade and 2 parts tea – basically an Arnold Palmer but it still worked the way I did it.

Now to balance all that zest and astringency I’m going to want to add some sweet.

I added 1 teaspoon of honey and mixed it up. It wasn’t enough sweetness in that volume but I didn’t want to overload with the honey flavor so I opted for a teaspoon of sugar. I would probably leave out the honey entirely next time and just add a second teaspoon of sugar.

At this point the drink was complete and had a decent flavor but it needed to be colder. So, with my ingredients in my shaker cup I tossed in a big ice cube and shook it like crazy. Using a shaker and ice will super-cool any drink. In fact the outside of the shaker started forming frost as I shook.

Poured it into a handy tumbler and voila. For presentation in the future I would probably try to have shaved ice in the tumbler and then strain the mixture from the shaker over that. I think that combination would make this a killer poolside treat.

INGREDIENTS

1 part ginger liqueur
2 parts spiced rum
1/4 part lemon juice
4 parts iced tea (alternately use 2 parts lemonade and 2 parts iced tea)
1 teaspoon honey
1 teaspoon sugar (or just do 2 sugars and leave out the honey)

TASTING

First off, I’ll admit that this one is an acquired taste and it grew on me as I drank it. The smell of the drink was primarily that of black tea – a rich earthy smell, and a hint of citrus. Nothing overpowering in the scent.

On the initial sip the lemon flavor jumps right out at you and the underlying ginger tickles the tongue. The added sweeteners works well to counterbalance this. The tea flavor also smooths out those two harsher flavors. Funnily the spiced rum almost disappeared into the mix. No hint of the vanilla and it’s normal alcohol burn is completely subsumed by the other liquids.

The aftertaste was dominated by the ginger – not heavily but it was the last thing I tasted after swallowing. A pleasant aftertaste in my opinion.

Overall this experiment was a slightly tart, refreshing drink with a hint of astringency. I’d drink it again, especially with more ice as an offset to a blistering hot day.

Try it, you might like it or experiment with slightly different proportions and additives.

Until next time, may all your drinks be tasty. Cheers.