cocktail no.1 | mezanmi

Mezanmi made with Haiti’s finest Rhum Barbancourt

Sak pase, mezanmi?

What's up, friends? We thought that the best way to kickoff this cocktail club was with a little Haitian hospitality. Mezanmi seemed like a fitting name for the first cocktail whose star is Rhum Barbancourt, a sugar cane dark rum from Haiti.

Because we’re friends, we're not going to bury the recipe after some ridiculous story that goes on and on and barely has anything to do with the recipe at hand (at least not this time). Here you go:

Ingredients

• 2 ounces Rhum Barbancourt

• 1/4 ounce Benedictine

• 1/4 ounce orange liqueur (Cointreau)

• 1/4 ounce Frangelico

• 1/4 ounce ancho Chile liqueur

• 1 dash angostura bitters

• 1 dash orange bitters

• 1 dash old fashioned bitters (Dashfire)

• Garnish: dried persimmon slice

Steps

• Add all the ingredients into a mixing glass over ice

• Stir until well-chilled, approximately 30 seconds

• Strain into rocks glass over ice (single large cube preferred)

• Garnish with dried persimmon slice

So, where do you get a large cube? Well, you can go the super fancy route and buy some. We recommend Minnesota Ice. Or you can just be "regular" fancy and make the ice cubes yourself. We have a few (different shapes and sizes) silicon ice cube trays. One like this would work great for this cocktail.

As for the rocks glass, whatever you've got will do just fine. As you'll learn over the course of the cocktail club, we maybe have too many glassware options. It's a problem. Fun story about the glass we are using for Mezanmi - I got them at a music festival in Vienna. We hadn't planned to go to a music festival, we kind of stumbled upon it. And while we were there, we realized that it was super close to the pizza place I had read about that allegedly had the world's best gluten free pizza. Obviously, I had to verify that claim. For those who care, Pizzaria Scarabochio has the best gluten free pizza I have EVER had. I've had really good gluten free pizza in Minneapolis (Burch, please reopen!), but the pizza I had in Vienna is still unmatched. Anyway, back to the festival, I couldn't believe that an outdoor festival was serving drinks in real glasses and such gorgeous ones at that. I maybe gifted myself a set for the cost of a few Negronis. Sometime later, back in the States, we're at Hai Hai being served drinks in the very same glasses and that's when we realize they are pretty common "fancy" bar glasses. Oh well, whenever we use ours, I remember that day in Vienna fondly.

We hope you enjoy Mezanmi!