You’d be forgiven if the very considered coconut rum was… not a very good one. For a lot of the trendy cocktail revival, coconut rum has been kind of filed away as a product of youthful misguidance. Current years, nonetheless, have seen the flavored spirits class shed its gimmicky repute and grow to be a severe pursuit for severe producers. Planteray was a pioneer on this realm when the model launched its pineapple rum in 2015, and now, its Reduce & Dry rum joins the fray as a fast-track option to contemporary coconut taste—no fat-wash wanted.
Not like lots of the different coconut-flavored rums in the marketplace, Reduce & Dry leans on aged rum as the bottom, particularly a mix of column and pot nonetheless Barbados rum. The coconut taste, in the meantime, comes from ripe coconuts which have been lower and dried—therefore the title—within the solar to pay attention taste earlier than being infused into the spirit. The result’s a richly flavored rum with no hint of artificiality.
As somebody with firsthand expertise trying all of the methods to coconut your cocktail, from fat-washing to coconut-aging, Reduce & Dry has grow to be an instantaneous fixture of my house bar for its skill to convey a tropical burst of taste to the classics. Swapped in for gin in a Negroni, the aperitivo staple takes on an overt tropical edge; it gives a straightforward but decadent improve to the Espresso Martini; it’s a shoo-in for the Piña Colada; and a no brainer merely topped with coconut water. It’s even adequate to clean away the recollections of dangerous coconut rum.