You’d be forgiven if the very considered coconut rum was… not an excellent one. For a lot of the fashionable cocktail revival, coconut rum has been kind of filed away as a product of youthful misguidance. Latest years, nonetheless, have seen the flavored spirits class shed its gimmicky repute and change into a severe pursuit for severe producers. Planteray was a pioneer on this realm when the model launched its pineapple rum in 2015, and now, its Reduce & Dry rum joins the fray as a fast-track solution to contemporary coconut taste—no fat-wash wanted.
Not like lots of the different coconut-flavored rums available on the market, Reduce & Dry leans on aged rum as the bottom, particularly a mix of column and pot nonetheless Barbados rum. The coconut taste, in the meantime, comes from ripe coconuts which have been reduce and dried—therefore the identify—within the solar to pay attention taste earlier than being infused into the spirit. The result’s a richly flavored rum with no hint of artificiality.
As somebody with firsthand expertise making an attempt all of the methods to coconut your cocktail, from fat-washing to coconut-aging, Reduce & Dry has change into a direct fixture of my house bar for its potential to carry a tropical burst of taste to the classics. Swapped in for gin in a Negroni, the aperitivo staple takes on an overt tropical edge; it presents a straightforward but decadent improve to the Espresso Martini; it’s a shoo-in for the Piña Colada; and a no brainer merely topped with coconut water. It’s even ok to scrub away the recollections of unhealthy coconut rum.