A few weeks ago I was invited to enter the Second Annual Clément Rhum NYC Cocktail Challenge. Many major spirits and liqueur producers sponsor contests for cocktails using their products so that new and interesting ways can be developed to showcase their line and present them to the public. These contests are venues for bartenders and cocktail designers to show how creative they can be in coming up with new, interesting, and tasty liquid treats. So here is Part One in my experience in the Second Annual Clément Rhum NYC Cocktail Challenge.

The way I became involved started almost exactly three months ago in early February of this year. One of my professions when I am not writing, researching, or traveling, is working as a food and beverage consultant. A very small part of this is designing cocktails that are new in style or taste, and use some of the new spirits and liqueurs that are being released.

A few months ago I wrote about Clément Rhum's orange liqueur, Creole Shrubb. Since then I have tried several of their rhum agricole line, produced in French Martinique and been very impressed. Rhum agricole is rum that is made from fresh squeeze sugar cane, not from processed cane products like molasses. They tend to be way more complex and dryer, many times they are more like a fine cognac in taste. One of Clément rhums is their Première Canne Rhum, a white rum that is smooth, musky, and very good. I always thought that white rum was kind of flavorless and boring, but this rum is anything but that. (By the way, I will be using the terms Rhum and Rum in various contexts here. I will use Rhum when it is the preferred spelling for a specific French Martinique product, and Rum as the general term.)

I thought about what ingredients would go well with this rum and a few things came to mind. Fresh fruit juices was first. This was in January of this year and we were having a warm spell for a few days here in the New York City area. I saw some great Clementine oranges in the market, right next to some fat, shiny lemons so I picked up a dozen or two of each. I squeezed up a quart of fresh lemon and clementine juices and did some playing around. I pulled out the famous mixologist and cocktailian Gary Regan's great book, The Joy of Mixology and looked at his ideas on families of cocktails and what ingredients are used in what proportions.

I knew that I had to have clementine juice because it is so sweet and tasty with a hint at times of a musky flavor, better than orange juice in many ways, but it's a hassle to prepare. I also liked the idea of the play on words of using clementines and Clément rhum. The thing was what else would work well since the two combined was good but didn't come close to what I was looking for. A cocktail needs complexity and while the Première Canne Rhum is complex it needed a bit more. The addition of lemon juice helped bring down the sweetness, and I tried using some orange bitters as well. This improved the drink drastically as the bitters brought a hint of herbs. I tried several types of bitters out of my collection of more than a dozen until three versions came to the fore. Gary Regan's orange bitters, Fee's orange bitters, and Stirrings blood orange bitters. I really liked the Regan's and Fee's but the Stirrings seemed to suit the drink just a tiny bit more.

The drink was shaping up into a classic Sours style drink, one that was very popular decades ago, but has lost a bit of ground in the past 30-40 years. The combination of all the ingredients, Première Canne Rhum, fresh clementine and lemon juices, and blood orange bitters was very good, but just not good enough. I was stumped for a week or so in how to take this drink up a level from very good to the aspect of greatness. Then a new product came to my attention, St. Germain Elderflower liqueur, which I wrote about back in March. The delicate and slightly sweet taste of the liqueur seemed made for cocktails.

I tried adding a little bit and knew I was on to something. After a few slightly tipsy days of recipe formulation I came up with the final product. The St. Clémentine Sour. In style, the St. Clémentine Sour is what is known as an International Sour. It is tart, tangy, mildly musky, and slightly sweet. In all, a very complex cocktail using all the ingredients I mentioned before. Clément Première Canne Rhum Agricole from French Martinique, St. Germain Elderflower French liqueur, fresh squeezed Clementine and Lemon juices, and Stirrings Blood Orange Bitters. The color is a bright tangerine orange with a smell of orange flowers.

I was very pleased with this cocktail and served it to several friends and professionals over the next few months. I had met Benjamin Jones a 4th generation member of the Clément family and the Exec. V.P./Managing Director at a wine and spirits event last year so I sent him a copy of the recipe and told him that if he liked it he could use it. Well it turned out that he did. So much so that he invited me to be in the Second Annual Clément Rhum NYC Cocktail Challenge that was being held within the next two weeks, an event which I hadn't heard about until then. So I gladly accepted.

To Be Continued...