SAINT CROIX RUM FIX

PINK LADY’S ENDANGERED COCKTAIL OF THE MONTH
SAINT CROIX RUM FIX

by Pink Lady

AS THE DAYS GROW LONGER and warmer our thoughts turn to porch drinks – the type of cocktails you want to sip on a veranda as you watch the sun go down. Or, if you live in a shoebox-sized apartment in a city with sky-high real estate, on a stoop or fire escape. Whether sipped on the roof deck or at the garden (AKA basement) level, a cocktail can be a quick “fix” for urban-dwelling blues.
The fix, like the julep or the fizz, is a category of drink born before Prohibition which enjoyed a great deal of popularity through the end of the nineteenth century. “Then the drink – a simple combination of spirits, juice, water, sugar, and ice – mysteriously disappeared,” writes Ted “Dr. Cocktail” Haigh in Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails.

The simple drink morphed during its “38-year lifespan” as the bartender’s palette grew, calling for syrups and eventually liqueurs “and the fix’s uniqueness blurred”, writes Dr. Cocktail. “This may be what killed the fix as a class of drink: no overriding identifiable characteristics.” The basic template lives on for modern bartenders, even if they may not realize the structure for what it is: a reliably constructed and refreshing antique.

Dr. Cocktail offers up the St. Croix Rum Fix, which we’re thrilled to mix for a porch hang, originally printed in Albert Barnes’ The Complete Bartender, circa 1884.

SAINT CROIX RUM FIX
2 ounces of Virgin Islands rum • 1/2 ounce of pineapple syrup • juice of 1/2 a lemon • 2 teaspoons of sugar or simple syrup

In a tumbler or large wineglass, combine ingredients. stir until dissolved. pack crushed ice into the glass and garnish garnish with seasonal fruit. serve with a straw.

PINEAPPLE SYRUP
4 cups of cane sugar • 2 cups of water • 1 small fresh pineapple, skinned and cubed

add together in a bowl or quart jar. let stand for 24 hours. remove the pineapple cubes, lightly pressing them with a hand juicer or other method to squeeze some additional juice into the mixture. stir to dissolve any residual sugar. pour the resulting syrup through a tea strainer or cheesecloth lined funnel into a 1.5 liter bottle. add a small dash of spirits (any distillate of at least 😯 proof; 151 rum is recommended) as a preservative. keep refrigerated – it should keep for three months easily.