The secret to a good recipe, aside from reading ALL of the directions and not skipping to the end, is having good ingredients…

Stop buying the green bottle of lime, crack open that chain purse, and spend thirty cents on a real lime!

Enough with the generic simple syrup. Take a few minutes, get a saucepan, boil up some Demerara sugar, and get classy!

And while you’re at it…

Up your booze game a notch or two for that cocktail. Now we’re not talking about going nuts and buying Pappy Van Nonsense for a highball or GlenHightariff 18 for your hot toddy. That’s not what we’re talking about here unless you got money burning a hole in your skinny jeans which in all honesty you shouldn’t be wearing. Is your mirror not working anymore???

Better cocktails actually taste better with better ingredients. But you shouldn’t need to make a withdrawal from your virtual cryptocurrency bank just to go cocktail component shopping.

Which brings us to today’s offering, The Chairman’s Reserve Rum from Saint Lucia Distillers. If you’re making a tiki cocktail, a Cuba Libre, or just pouring a dram to sip out on the porch, you want a rum that enhances your cocktail, pleases the palate, and won’t break the bank. The fine print on this offering tells us…

Chairman’s Reserve is known by rum nerds as a “single blended” rum as it is a blend of column and pot still rum from the same distillery. St. Lucia Distillers is a small distillery with a great diversity of flavors as they have 3 pot stills and a twin column Coffey still as well as use two independent yeast strains for different fermentations. Chairman’s Reserve is predicated on top quality and distinction, and only used bond sucrose (fair trade) certified molasses. Created by Laurie Barnard, the last founding family member to hold the Chairman’s position at St. Lucia Distillers in 1999, he experimented with blending respective casks of pot still rum and column still rum. By returning the blended rum back into oak barrels for additional aging, Barnard created a soft, well-balanced, and flavorful spirit that has become the benchmark for St. Lucian rum. (40% ABV; MSRP: $27.99).

So, we’re putting the Chairman’s Reserve through its paces. First off, G-LO and yours truly babble our way through a straight tasting of the rum with 1 part analysis and 2 parts yapping. Then we get out of the way and bring in Mrs. Satellite Engineer (aka LAKocktail) and her burgeoning drink-making skills to put the Chairman’s Reserve into a tiki cocktail to see how it holds up.

It’s a very special deluxe episode of #BoozedancingTV. So, wake the kids, get the dog, sit back, and enjoy!

First up, our review of this mighty fine rum…

And here’s where we gave LAKocktail some space to mix up the Daughter of Dr. Funk…

The Daughter of Dr. Funk Recipe

  • .5 ounce Fresh-squeezed lemon juice
  • .25 ounce Grenadine
  • .5 ounce Fresh-squeezed lime juice
  • .5 ounce Demerara simple syrup
  • 2.25 ounce of St Lucia Distillers Chairman’s Reserve Rum
  • 1 ounce Seltzer
  • Crushed Ice

Method: Shake vigorously and serve over crushed ice in a Double Old Fashioned Glass.

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Many thanks to Dana Bruneau PR Consulting for sending us this very delisious rum sample!