Lady Trent

I’m quite excited to partner with Drizly to bring you today’s cocktail!

If you haven't heard of Drizly, it's an alcohol delivery service. It was started in Boston in 2013 by two Boston College graduates, and today it's available in 18 cities. For a $5 delivery fee, you can have the bottles of your choice delivered to your home within an hour. There's no markup - Drizly partners with local liquor stores and sells everything at their prices. They also sell mixers and ice!

My first encounter with Drizly was earlier this year when my brother, who lives in New Zealand, used it to send my husband a nice bottle of Japanese whiskey for his birthday. It was so convenient - he ordered it online, I got a notification and selected a delivery window, and it showed up at our door the next day. It might have even been the same evening. I was very impressed.

When Drizly kindly offered to send me a bottle for this post, I jumped at the chance to order some Appleton Estate Signature Blend Rum (formerly called Appleton Estate V/X). Appleton is one of the most common Jamaican rums you find here in the States. As you may remember, varieties of rum differ from one another largely based on where they're made; each Caribbean island has its own style, largely influenced by whether they were colonized by the English, French, or Spanish. Jamaican rum is English-style. It's distilled in a pot-still and has a distinct flavor that most people refer to as a "funkiness." I'd never really gotten a handle on what on earth this means, so the first thing I did when my bottle arrived was was compare the Appleton to the two other aged rums I had in my bar: Barbancourt 3 Star from Haiti, which is a French-style aged rum made from sugarcane juice, and Folly Cove from Gloucester, MA, made from fermented molasses.

The Appleton is, well... a bit funkier. It stands up to other ingredients better, holding its own with a rich, fruity flavor. It's also smoother and much more pleasant to drink on its own than the other two. I was pretty excited to use it in a cocktail.

I wanted to do a spirit-forward cocktail that would really feature the Appleton's distinct flavor. I started by playing with a rum version of the Japanese Cocktail, a classic made with Cognac, orgeat, and bitters. (For the uninitiated, orgeat is an almond syrup.) It was pretty good, but when I replaced the orgeat with Velvet Falernum, I felt like I'd stumbled upon something perfect.

Falernum is a spiced syrup used in many Caribbean cocktails, flavored with ingredients like citrus zest, cloves, allspice, ginger, and almond. Velvet Falernum is an alcoholic version made in Barbados. It's basically a low-proof, sweetened, spiced rum. It did a wonderful job of enhancing the Appleton. Some orange and Angostura bitters rounded out the final product, which is a sort of a rum Old Fashioned. Despite all these big ingredients, it has a surprisingly delicate, almost floral flavor, which I decided to emphasize with a slender coupe and an orchid garnish.

I named my new cocktail the Lady Trent after the main character in a wonderful series of books I've been reading by Marie Brennan. It seemed to fit - the drink is strong, exotic, and elegant.

The Appleton Estate is available from Drizly here!

Lady Trent

2 oz. aged Jamaican rum (Appleton Signature Blend recommended)
1/2 oz. Velvet Falernum
1 dash Angostura bitters
1 dash orange bitters

Combine all ingredients in a mixing glass with ice and stir until chilled. Strain into a coupe and garnish with an edible flower.

Thanks to Drizly for making this post possible!