Cigar & Rum Pairing
More Dark Than Stormy
In a past pairing, I used a Dark ‘n Stormy for a cigar pairing. While the cocktail is one of my favorite rum drinks, it was hard to find the perfect pairing for it then, given the citric notes and considering that the ginger beer is not a mainstream ingredient that people are accustomed to. For this pairing, I decided to re-visit this iconic cocktail, but I wanted to reduce or eliminate its citric dimension.
The new recipe is now as follows:
- 2 oz. Coffee Liqueur
- 200 mL (6.75 oz.) Ginger Beer
- 2 oz. Captain Morgan Private Stock Rum
The preparation is very simple: you’ll need a Tumbler Glass, ideally 500-600ml (17-20 oz.). Fill the glass with ice cubes, all the way to the top. Then add the ingredients in the order listed by the recipe. The idea is to pour the Ginger Beer and the Captain Morgan rum slowly, to avoid them from being mixed with the other ingredients. There are people who like to mix all the ingredients when their Dark ‘N Stormy arrives, and that is a personal preference. In our case, however, since we are pairing with a cigar, you’ll soon find out why we don’t want the cocktail mixed.
Some of you may be asking why I selected Captain Morgan and what should you use if you don’t have this rum. I selected it because of its intense vanilla note, and that’s what you should look for in a potential replacement. Hopefully the rum you chose will not have much sugar added, to avoid creating a “sugar bomb” cocktail!
As far as the cigar, I selected a Robusto (52 x 5”) called Crusader, with a Havana Equator wrapper, the filler is primarily Nicaraguan, and the binder is Honduran and Nicaraguan leaves. The pre-analysis suggests that this should be a medium-bodied cigar, let’s see if this is indeed the case.
The Crusader Cigar
In its first third, the cigar’s body is soft-to-medium, very creamy and well-balanced. It is possible that this perception is caused by the intense vanilla notes from the cocktail. So far, the pairing is very enjoyable and effortless, easy to recommend.
As you drink more of the cocktail, the spiciness of the ginger starts to come forward, which surprised me in how it resulted in coffee-like notes, even though we hadn’t reached that layer yet. These coffee notes were very creamy and very enjoyable, a good pairing where neither flavor dominated.
As we approached the second third of the cigar, the experience continued to be the same, with a very well-balanced creaminess, perhaps even more wholesome. It was at that point that the coffee notes started to appear with subtlety, starting to show a truly integrated pairing.
In my case, I abandoned the cocktail at the very end, when I was smoking the last third of the cigar and all I had left in the glass was the sweet coffee liqueur. It was too sweet for me and I didn’t want to ruin the experience up to that point. The choice, of course, will be yours, based on your own preferences.
You can personalize the pairing, using a different rum or even changing the coffee liqueur for a cocoa liqueur, which I think would be a worthwhile experiment. If any of you try this, please let me know how it went. Without a doubt, this pairing surprised me with its simplicity. I always try to suggest simple pairings that are easy for our readers to replicate and this one is definitely highly recommendable.
Cheers!
Philip Ili Barake
#GRCigarPairing
