One small dinger for mankind

A Small Dinger

I have a troubled relationship with grenadine.

It’s an age-old cocktail ingredient, a syrup or cordial traditionally made from pomegranate (it’s name coming from grenade, French for pomegranate), sometimes slightly alcoholic. But modern grenadine is berry-based, mostly blackcurrant. Syrup merchants Monin acknowledge this shift by producing both a “grenadine” and a “pomegranate syrup”. I don’t know why this change happened—perhaps because traditional grenadine is both sweet and tart, and modern palates maybe hanker after something less edgy.

In any case, I find all commercial grenadines have a bubblegum confectionary flavour that, even in small quantities, ruins most cocktails. (Monin’s pomegranate syrup is better, but still a bit synthetic.) So nowadays I make my own, very simply, by mixing equal parts POM Wonderful pomegranate juice (it comes in a dopey-looking segmented bottle but it is 100% pomegranate, apparently) with granulated sugar, heated in a pan until it all dissolves then allowed to cool. (Normal cocktail syrup I make with a ratio of two parts sugar by volume to one part water, but when I tried that with pomegranate juice I discovered that it set into a jelly at room temperature. Something like pectin in the juice? Who knows. But at 1:1 it stays liquid and, kept in the fridge, it seems to avoid going mouldy for a surprisingly long time.)

Anyway, I mention all this because I’d like to introduce you to a cocktail that, for my money, makes grenadine taste good. It’s called a Small Dinger* and I noticed it printed on the frontispiece of the 1935 reprint of Bar Florida Cocktails, in the 2008 facsimile edition produced by Ross Bolton. Its appeal lay in its simplicity and, at the same time, its oddness, mixing rum and gin, augmented only with the straightforward sweet-and-sour combo of grenadine and lemon juice.**

Small Dinger
1 shot gin
1 shot rum
½ shot grenadine
½ lemon juice
Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

But the really odd thing about the Small Dinger is that it really works. For me this is what cocktails are all about—you can pick out the contributions of all the ingredients, but the whole is somehow greater than the sum of its parts. On the nose you notice the fruitiness of the grenadine, then on the tongue you get a clear warmth from the rum, with the sugar spirit flavour coming through, plus the high juniper notes and dry spice complexity of the gin. And the sweet/tart of the grenadine fruit marries well: this is actually quite a high proportion of grenadine (many recipes call for just a dash) but it does not seem cloying as it both has a clear space for itself in the mix and is balanced by the sourness of the lemon juice. (You may need to juggle the exact proportions depending on the sweetness of the grenadine.)

The original recipe for the Small Dinger. Click to enlarge

I first tried this cocktail with Botran Reserva rum—I am, as you know, a fan of the whole Botran range. I’ve also tried it with Havana Club 7-year-old. But, as you can see, the original recipe specifies Bacardi rum (back in those days Bacardi was still made in Cuba, rather than Puerto Rico, Spain and other places, as it is now), a white rum, I assume; so I also tried it with Botran Reserva Blanca and Brugal Blanco. Frankly it works with all of them, though my personal preference would be the darker Botran Reserva, where the complex mid-range notes of dried fruit, vanilla an chocolate slot nicely in with the fresh fruit flavours and the high spice notes of the gin (I’ve been using Tanqueray as a typical, classic style for this experiment).

All I can really say is: try it. It needs no special ingredients (well, I would advise making your own grenadine, though it may work with commercial stuff) but represents that sort of mixological earth magic that we all have easy access to.

* You will find some suggestions online that the name is lewd, but so far as I can tell a dinger is just a contraction of 19th-century humdinger—a thing that is an excellent example of its kind.

** It’s not a common cocktail but some recipes you’ll find actually specify lime juice. It’s a bit of a controversy because some of these early Cuban books talk about limón verde, meaning lime, but which was sloppily translated just as “lemon”. Yet this recipe, as you can see, specifies simply jugo limon, so I assume we’re on fairly safe ground using lemon juice. It works nicely with lime too.

Botran Reserva Blanca

Francis from Distillnation came round the other day to drop off some absinthe and he presented me also with a handsome bottle of Botran’s new Blanca Reserva. It doesn’t officially launch in the UK till later this year, but when it does it will retail for about £22.

Botran are a Guatemalan family firm who have been making rum since 1939. Originally sugar cane planters, they still make all their rum with virgin cane juice from their own family estate in Retalhuleu, in the south of the country, using their own strain of yeast taken from pineapple, before ageing it slowly in the cool mountain town of Quetzaltenango. They use a mixture of bourbon (sometimes re-charred), sherry and port barrels and practise a “solera” system, more usually found in sherry production, where rums of different ages are constantly blended. To get an idea of just how elaborate this is, have a look at the flow chart below. Their current range consists of the Reserva, containing rums aged 5–14 years, and the Solera 1893, a drier, more profound blend of rums aged 5–18 years.

Click on the image to see a larger version

Their new white rum is not quite what it seems: for it too has been barrel aged using the solera technique; the current bottling contains rums aged 3–5 years and is made in the same way as the Reserva, except that there is no port barrel ageing. It is then charcoal filtered to remove the colour. Whereas most white rums are intended as mixers, Botran say theirs can be enjoyed both in cocktails and simply on the rocks.

Straightaway I can tell you that this Blanca makes a cracking Daiquiri,* with the rum coming through as tight and fruity, with a petrolly spirit thrust that pokes through the lime and sugar, yet bonds smoothly and perfectly with those flavours too. I try a Mary Pickford,** and again the rum lends an elegant power to this frothy, fruity number.

Neat, the Reserva Blanca has a juicy nose with elements of marzipan and cherry Bakewell. The palate is very soft and smooth for a white rum, and maintains the marzipan flavours. I have bottles of Bacardi and Havana Club 3-year-old to hand so I try them alongside: the Bacardi has a dry, sour nose by comparison, whereas the Botran is mellow and inviting with hints of chocolate. Likewise the Bacardi is thin and sharp on the palate, with a hint of blue cheese and seemingly a bit watery (though it is 37.5% ABV compared to the Botran’s 40%).

A Daiquiri made with Botran Reserva Blanca

The Havana Club has, unsurprisingly, a strong wood element on the nose and a tequila-like sourness. The palate likewise has a sawmill wood character plus a crude banana fruit. It somehow reminds me of the inside of a rubber balloon, and is quite tough to drink on its own. All of which goes to show how sophisticated the Botran is for a white rum, and how it is indeed a white rum you can enjoy neat.

OK, so the Botran Reserva Blanca will retail for almost double what you can find the Bacardi and Havana Club rums for in supermarket offers, but inevitably that careful ageing and filtering is going to come at a price. But how does the Blanca compare with the standard Botran Reserva? The Reserva has more obvious wood, plus dried fruit like figs, orange and raisins. I have a bottle of Havana Club 7-year-old knocking around so I do a comparison: this is dry, appley like Calvados and has a more stern, single-minded balance. By comparison the Botran Reserva is wreathed in sweet sugar and almond softness and smooth, smoky wood.

A Mary Pickford made with the Botran Blanca

Side by side, the Blanca has a much quieter nose than the Reserva, delicate, clean with a hint of a vodka-like medicinal note. The Reserva on the other hand immediately hits you with strong sherry notes, plus all that dried fruit. On the palate the Blanca channels more of the underlying sugar spirit character, a fuel for cocktails, but so much smoother than a typical white rum. The Reserva, by comparison, has a distinct oak wood character, which carries an acidity on the tongue that makes it in some ways less smooth than the Blanca.

This comparison helps me understand where the Blanca fits into the range. Whereas the Reserva (and more so the Solera 1893) is about in-your-face character and complexity, the Blanca is more about smoothness. I can see why they might encourage consumers to drink it neat, perhaps not as a profound character study, but as a clean, classy shot like premium vodka.

With this thought in mind I tried the Blanca from the freezer. It works OK, coming across at first with vodka-like medicinal notes, before the fruitiness hits and the sugar. I wouldn’t especially recommend it (but then I’ve never met a decent vodka that I thought was improved by being served frozen), yet it works well enough. For me the Botran Reserva Blanca works best in simple, classic rum cocktails.

* 2½ shots rum, ¾ shot lime juice, ¾ shot sugar syrup

** 2 shots rum, 2 shots pineapple juice, 1 tsp grenadine, dash of maraschino