Drink appeared a year or so back and has contributed plenty to improving cocktail knowledge in China. There was a time when knowledge-thirsty Chinese bartenders would chase me out of bars. No, they weren’t requesting I settle my tab. They simply wanted me to write down my famous recipe for Pernod and water, which went: “put Pernod in glass, put water in (same) glass”. Thanks to Drink I now get ignored.

Times really have changed. At one time, Pernod and water was my drink partly because Pernod was one of the few imported liquors nobody had got around to faking. Standards really were low. These days, at least in Shanghai, you are spoiled for choice when it comes to finding a decent cocktail.

The cool thing about Drink is that it is a bilingual publication. Rather nicely, this means I get an article published in Chinese without having to actually write the thing in Chinese. It also means Chinese bartenders get good information in their own language, alongside the same material in English. The English very useful, since English is the best language for those inclined to do further research on drinks-related matters.

Previous Chinese language bar industry magazines could be spectacularly bad. I remember an article on Champagne illustrated exclusively with photos of Trappist beer bottles. A story on wine in the same issue revealed that a sophisticated and well-bred woman is instantly recognizable because she will always add her ice cubes before she pours her wine, never afterward. Another piece introducing the major families of spirits and liqueurs did fairly well until confronted with bitters. Aware only of Angostura, unaware of how it was used, but spotting details for a Dutch distributor on the label, the writer winged it. The result was an improbable account of elderly Dutch men swigging from Angostura bottles in between tending to their tulips.

When I get around to it, I will post a couple more articles I have written for Drink.

While offering pleasant sojourning, the Guatemalan rum landscape does not exactly excite with its variety. Everything comes from a single company, Industrias Licoreras de Guatemala, though that company produces at least two labels – Zacapa and Botran.

Zacapa represents the glamorous international face of Guatemalan rum: attractive, commercialized, definitely expensive, and while it makes for exceedingly pleasant company, you can’t help suppressing the occasional yawn and wondering how thick that make up is. Botran in contrast is the slightly homely stay-at-home sister, working a nine-to-five job and hurrying home to cook instead of mixing with high society, and generally getting taken for granted by all and sundry. Zacapa smugly preens itself from little clusters of high priced bottles in duty free stores and on the top shelves of smarter bars, while Botran runs itself ragged covering the shelves of local supermarkets and bars, where it jostles for attention with the anise liqueur that is ubiquitous in Latin America.The question then is this: does Zacapa deserve to be Guatemala’s Ambassador of Rum?

Being a rebel, and a fan of rum with a glow to it, I’m going to support the underdog and say I rather like Botran.

Exhibits A through E follow.

Botran X/L

A clear rum with a smooth sweet taste, and a staple in Guatemalan bars for mixing rum cocktails. The smooth sweetness is typical of Central American rums. An obvious comparison rum would be Flor de Caña, but Botran X/L is rougher, with a slight spiciness, and an almost chewy graininess. Not especially exciting but does the job.

Botran Anejo 12 Años

This aged rum near the top end of the Botran line is inexpensive and was my regular rum in Guatemala. It is fairly ubiquitous, though Botran also produce a cheaper Anejo 8 Años and Añejo Oro. Unfortunately I enjoyed the Añejo 12 Años so much that I never got around to writing notes on the two younger rums. Anyway, the Añejo 12 Años is a dark honey colored rum with a syrupy body, gentle alcoholic glow, pleasant dry spice notes and a hint of woody bitterness. I found it a rewarding but undemanding sipper, as well as a base for an exceptionally smooth and rich rum and coke – best with a touch of lime to temper all the sweetness.

Botran Solera 1893 Añejo

This tasty rum pours with a light copper-color and a viscous consistency, forming thick legs that slide slowly down the glass. The nose is sweet and rich, and carries a clear woody note reminiscent of incense – sandalwood maybe? A dash of cinnamon or canella also lurks in there. Tasting reveals sweetness with a soft glow (hotter than Zacapa), building into a mouthful of light woody spice. Though the body is sweet, the flavors are dry and austere, without the fruitiness of Zacapa. The taste does not evolve much, though an initial trace of wild honey slowly builds into something substantial. The aftertaste lingers long and pleasantly – the sign of a good rum.

I like this rum. It has a unique flavor, with all that spicy wood reminding me of a Catholic Church. That said, it is rather sweet, and while the flavors are interesting they are not especially deeply layered. I get the impression of sipping an intricately spiced cake syrup with an dry perfumed edge rather than a complex spirit.

My conclusion? This is a simple but interesting rum with unusual flavors I happen to like.

Ron Zacapa 15

I was keen to try this one. My first taste of Zacapa 23 impressed me, but it seemed that the more I tasted it the more I was left wanting something a little sharper. Perhaps Zacapa 15 was the answer? You don’t see the Zacapa 15 around very much, but I finally got my opportunity to try it in Flores airport, where the café was selling miniatures.

The Zacapa 15 pours a light gold rather than the very deep copper of the Zacapa 23, but has a similar viscous consistency. The nose initially reminded me of Botran, being light and spicy, but the fruitiness of Zacapa 23 was also there in a reduced dose. The taste was far more fiery and assertive than Zacapa 23, with a strong tingling bite on the front of the tongue, a peppery mouth feel, plus a lingering bitterness I didn’t recall from Zacapa 23. For a sweet and syrupy rum it came across as surprisingly sharp, though it didn’t have the dry edge of Botran. The flavors are intense but not particularly well integrated. There are strong fruity notes, but an odd underlying acidity makes it hard to place the fruit. Things improve as you get into it though, with pleasant vanilla emerging to smooth the rough edges. I end up thinking of vanilla ice-cream and stewed fruit – served in a bowl that accidentally got a drop or two of gasoline in it.

If the above sounds unfair, I should stress that a single taste of this rum was not enough. I would have to try it again sometime to give it a fair go. Still, if you are looking for Zacapa with a little more ‘edge’ the Zacapa 15 may not work, since it comes across as rather different to its older relative. Overall I was disappointed, and left thinking Zacapa 23 is still the better of the two.

Ron Zacapa 23

I already reviewed this rum here, so I’ll basically leave it at that. Nice but overrated. Though having said that, if you have never tried this rum it makes an interesting eye opener.

Zacapa and coke was a popular request among Americans staying in Antigua. Although I never partook I’m not sure I like the sound of it. Zacapa is already so smooth and sweet it hardly needs further sweetening and dilution.

There is some controversy about whether Zacapa have modified their formula over the years. Many say the old fully palm-wrapped bottles tasted better. A little palm-wrapped miniature Zacapa 23 stuffed in a display case behind the bar in my hotel in Guatemala City seemed to give me a chance to do a compare and contrast.

Tasting the dusty palm-wrapped miniature against a glass from a new bottle did reveal some differences. The older Zacapa had less fruitiness and acidity, more dark cane flavors, a warmer ‘rumminess’, and perhaps a little dash of the funkiness from Appleton Estate. Of course some of the differences in taste I noticed could have come from the length of time the miniature had been lying around, probably exposed to warm bar lights etc. There was something a vaguely ‘cooked’ about its flavor.

Conclusion

Zacapa gets all the attention but Botran is worth a closer look. Both are sweet rums, but Botran offers a drier style at a more attractive price. By giving Botran a go, Zacapa fans can broaden their horizons with an alternative Guatemalan rum, while Zacapa haters may finally find a Guatemalan rum they enjoy.

The Haitian earthquake was what greeted me when I got online this morning.

Haiti has never had it easy and the last few years have been especially rough. The country has had to deal with the Gonaive floods, the horrible school collapse in Port-au-Prince,  the political strife and social anarchy that followed the ouster of Aristide and led to Haiti playing host to a UN peacekeeping deployment, and now this earthquake. It’s too early to say how bad this earthquake really is. Maybe the casualties are light. Probably they run into the thousands. Key government buildings in Port-au-Prince have collapsed, and the devastation is almost certainly far worse in the shoddily built slums that dominate the city. Life in Haiti is difficult even at its best, and this latest event is simply tragic.

Now seems an appropriate time to mention a couple of things about my visit to Haiti that I somehow never got around to writing about earlier. . .

A sad fact of life in Haiti. . . Access to clean water appears to be one of the perks of employment. Certainly in both the hotels I stayed in, staff would carry canisters of water home at the end of their shift. It must be tough to spend your day cleaning beautiful rooms, preparing extravagant meals, and pouring drinks with silly prices, then stagger home carrying 20 kg of water for your family. Actually, since Haitians are used to all this they don’t really stagger. But from my comfortable vantage point at the bar it still looked like hard work. That was just a little thing I happened to notice. For some reason it has lurked in my mind ever since, lurking a little larger than most of my observations about Haiti.

Another thing. Although I never wrote about it, possibly the most memorable sight from my Haitian visit came during my flight from Cap-Haitien to Port-au-Prince. This was right after the Gonaive floods in 2008.

I was flying Tortug’ Air into Port-au-Prince, sharing the plane with one of those dressed-in-her-best-because-today-she’s-flying Haitian girls. This example was in a kind of white gauze fairy outfit, decorated with the obligatory ruffles, plus real forest leaves and an outlandish trail that her mother had to hold off the ground to keep clean. Our flightpath meant Gonaive should have been somewhere off to our right. There was no obvious city there though, just a mass of water, a mass of water creating chaos for invisible people somewhere below.

The day was gray. We flew through oppressive gray skies, gray water covered corpses in Gonaive, and Port-au-Prince revealed itself as a sprawling gray slum. As we circled the airport before landing, a formation of US Navy helicopters swept up from the tarmac, tilted their noses, and began clattering north to the disaster zone. Our own little plane touched down in the hive of activity the helicopters had just left. As I strolled across the tarmac with my bags, vaguely worried about what awaited me in Port-au-Prince, US marines scampered back and forth a hundred meters away, busy loading and unloading more helicopters. The tarmac at Port-au-Prince airport that afternoon was an inspiring sight. The fairy skipped through the middle of it, entirely oblivious to the harried Marines, and mostly obvious to her mother’s struggle to preserve the cleanliness of that dress.

I left the airport and found my driver. The fairy and her mother stood forlornly arguing (about money?) with a taxi driver. I tried to have my driver ask them where they were going, thinking we could maybe give them a lift. But his English was bad and by the time he understood the taxi rank was already behind us. Somehow it seemed too much effort to have him turn round, so I got driven to my hotel and the fairy vanished from my life as fully and finally as a pebble tossed in a river. I’m sure she and her mother made it to wherever they were going. But did the taxi driver rip them off? Should I have had my driver turn back?

I am not American, and I do more than my share of bitching about America’s foreign policy, annoying Americans, and so on.  However, in places like Haiti at times like this, America is the best thing out there at just going in and getting the job done.

The U.S. Red Cross looks to be perhaps the most organized outfit in terms of responding to this current Haitian disaster. Apparently they are in the process of taking all sorts of stuff from a depot in Panama and getting it over to Haiti. Haiti barely has enough stuff at the best of times, even without the disruption caused by an earthquake, so I’m sure this effort by the Red Cross will help things. They have the stuff, the reach into the places that really need it, and no hidden agenda.

Now comes the bit were I mercilessly tug at heart strings, reducing my readers to incoherent, barely consolable, blubbering wrecks of inebriated charity. . .

As drinkers, whether of rum or of cocktails, we surely recognize how much Haiti has contributed. Rum drinkers should give heartfelt thanks to Haiti for Barbancourt, and while they are at it they should probably say something polite about Clairin – lest they be forced to down some. Meanwhile, cocktail drinkers should graciously thank Haiti for its bitter oranges, without which we wouldn’t have Cointreau and Grand Marnier.

So what better way to express your spirited gratitude to all things Haitian than to raise a glass and donate to the American Red Cross Haiti Appeal*? [UPDATE: The New Zealand Red Cross has now formally launched its own Haitian Earthquake Appeal, so that's a handy option if you happen to be in New Zealand.] Better still, donate first and then raise a glass, since raising glasses is known to exert a disruptive influence on good intentions. Modern technology makes parting with one’s money frighteningly easy, and those in the U.S. can donate $10 simply by texting HAITI to 90999. I have pitched in $100 – about the cost of a really nice bottle of rum.

Now I’m not sure if gin, whiskey, beer and wine drinkers have very much to thank Haiti for (Prestige Beer anyone?), but if you’re feeling generous please donate.

Finally, lets hope La Maison Barbancourt, including all staff, family, warehouses and plant, has survived the quake.

* I linked to a U.S. based appeal because most people reading this blog are in the U.S. However, that U.S. website appears to have issues accepting non-US credit cards. If you’re not in the U.S. but want to donate you might need to think about alternatives. I used the New Zealand Red Cross.

Chinatown proper in Santo Domingo stretches for merely a single block, a kilometer or two north of the old colonial city.  Stereotypical Chinese style gates mark each end of the block, but a few shops spill languidly beyond this central stretch.  I found Santo Domingo’s Chinatown to be small, and suffering a shortage of Chinese people.  There were certainly a few Chinese shops, but most were staffed primarily by Dominicans, with a single Chinese boss sitting around overseeing things.  Business seemed to be done primarily in Spanish, and many of the businesses didn’t look Chinese at all.

I had purposefully timed my visit for lunchtime, only to find an alarming lack of Chinese food.  Most of the ‘Chinese restaurants’ in Chinatown were simply ‘pica pollo’ (fried chicken) joints likes those Chinese ran (or rather hired Dominicans to run) elsewhere in town.  The Chinese touch in this shops is the option of eating abysmal looking fried rice with your fried chicken.

While searching for a semi-reasonable restaurant I found a small Confucius Square.

I also found plenty of aphrodisiac medication.  Food was more elusive though.

I decided to ask a girl in a Chinese furniture shop where I could find a real Chinese restaurant.  She turned out to be a recent arrival from Guangzhou so I figured I had struck the jackpot.  Cantonese generally care about what they eat after all.  Weirdly, she told me they were all good.  I could not fathom her answer.  How could the obvious crap in the nearby restaurants compare with the wealth of dining options in Guangzhou?  Perhaps she was being held in Chinatown against her will and suffering Stockholm Syndrome?

After a long walk around the area I decided that one of the side streets held my best hope. There was a reasonably authentic looking Cantonese restaurant, complete with a green tiled roof beneath which roast ducks hung behind glass.  The ducks didn’t look exceptional, but they looked clearly better than anything else on offer.

I wandered in. The waitresses were all Dominicans, but at least the menu was in both Chinese and Spanish.  Weirdly, despite all the gleaming carcasses displayed out front, the menu had no options for roast meats on rice. The boss was standing by the chopping board so I went and asked him if he could do a roast pork rice.  He said he could, but that the pork was still being roasted.  What self respecting Chinese restaurant is still roasting pork at lunchtime?  The chicken looked reasonable, at least compared to the dubious ducks, so I ordered that.

The food was well presented and I immediately cheered up.  I had come to the right place.  Little did I know I was about to eat possibly the worst Chinese meal of my life.  The rice was great, as were the vegetables.  The soup was also fine.  Sadly the chicken was beyond awful.  The meat had been hanging up masquerading as a roast chicken.  However, its iron texture and complete lack of any taste suggested it had been boiled for several days – possibly with spells in the microwave for further toughening. Somehow though it had the glistening appearance of a roast chicken, albeit an undernourished one.  Perhaps it had been painted and given a final oven roasting.  Perhaps it had been an experiment in producing one of those plastic chicken breasts you see displayed in food hall restaurants – but without using any plastic.  Anyway, while scientifically speaking the chicken was probably nutritious to a degree, its combination of toughness and tastelessness rendered it effectively inedible.

Before heading back to my hotel I stopped in the Chinese supermarket and picked up some expensive but very average Oolong tea.  There was no specialist tea shop in Chinatown, just a small supermarket.

I wandered back to my hotel, not envying the Santo Domingo Chinese.  The few that I chatted with had mentioned the weather and lack of pollution as their reasons for immigrating to the Dominican Republic.  I guess the weather is nice, but Santo Domingo is hardly unpolluted.  In any case, could these minor advantages made up for the crappy Chinese food?  I guess it takes a special kind of Chinese to live there.  I am not sure if they have much fun.

Tuesday 15th

- Arrive early evening and have a drink in the Carousel Bar at the Hotel Monteleone.  There I hope to run into Jay Hepburn of Oh Gosh!  Go for dinner some place.

Wednesday 16th

- Try to get up early enough to explore New Orleans in the morning.

-  2.00pm –  Toast to Tales of the Cocktail

-  4:30pm – Bloggers Reception

- 7.30pm – Save the Daiquiri Party

Thursday 17th

-  10.30am – To Have and Have Another: The Hemingway Bartender’s Companion

- 12.00pm – A bit of a toss up between Juniperlooza and Bourbon, Blues and Bluegras

- 2.30pm – Cognac and Armagnac: Understanding the nuances of the Spirits (this is a spirit I am very ignorant about so it should be interesting).

- 4.30pm – Haven’t quite decided, but possibly Latino Libations.

- 5.30 pm – Cocktail Hour

- 8.00 pm – Spirited Dinner at The Delichaise.

Friday 18th

- 10.30am – Amore, Amari

- 12.30pm – Rum, Ron, Rhum

- 2.30pm – History of Liqueurs

- 4.30pm – Impossible to choose here!  All four sessions look so interesting: Cocktails of the Old Raj; Essential Guide to American Whiskey, Rye Nation, and Sensory Perception in Mixology.  I guess I’ll just decide at the last minute or something.

- 8.00pm – I may check out Rum and all that Jazz.  On the other hand I may just go for a wander out on the town.

Saturday 19th

- 10.30am – The Cafes of Paris

- 12.30pm – History of Herbsaint (though the egg session also looks interesting)

-  4.30pm – Making your own cocktail ingredients

-  6pm – Possibly the Tiki party or maybe just check out the town.

Sunday 20th

- 10.30am – The Gentleman’s Companion: The life and times of Charles A Baker

- 12.30pm – The Flowing Bowl: A history of punch

- 5pm – Wormwood Society absinthe soiree

Monday 21st

Head on to the Caribbean