Hurricane

Taste

Two rums doing two different jobs here: the Jamaican brings a funky, ester-driven fruitiness and a grassy edge, the dark rum adds molasses depth and weight underneath. Passion fruit syrup is properly tart-sweet and tropical rather than one-note, and the lemon keeps the whole thing bright. These have a reputation as sickly tourist-trap drinks, but made with real ingredients and no red dye, in this classic 2:1:1 ratio, it's a genuinely well-balanced, punchy rum sour.

Origin

The Hurricane was invented at Pat O'Brien's in New Orleans's French Quarter in the 1940s, and the reason for its existence is pure wartime logistics rather than inspiration. During World War Two, whisky and other popular spirits were in short supply, but rum was plentiful thanks to Caribbean imports, so distributors required bars to buy large quantities of it to get their hands on anything else. Pat O'Brien, business partner Charlie Cantrell and general manager George Oechsner Jr. needed a way to move all that surplus rum fast, so they built a fruity, batchable drink around it: rum, passion fruit syrup and lemon juice. It's named for the glass it was served in, shaped like a hurricane lamp, not the storm. Unexpectedly, it became the bar's calling card and, eventually, New Orleans's unofficial drink.