Link: The Bartender's List - Jeffrey Morgenthaler →

A few quick questions with Jeffrey Morgenthaler.

“Uh, probably a menu full of brown, bitter, and stirred drinks with ingredients even I have never heard of. That’s something I can’t get behind. When did you guys all get together and decide to make drinking in bars a really miserable experience? Because I missed that meeting. I’m not saying you need a menu full of dumb drinks like mine, but for the love of god, please stop it with this shit.”
— Jeffrey Morgenthaler

Link: The re-emergence of rum →

A brief overview of the rise and fall and rise of rum.

“While bartenders and rum aficionados look for such complexity, bar guests often look for sweetness. Unsweetened rum is often too harsh for tasting straight. Simo’s reply was that, “‘Ooh, that’s smooth’ is the worst tasting note ever” for it favors the bland and inoffensive. More flavor, for example, can be generated with longer, slower ferments, fermenting with dunder from prior batches, and fermenting to lower ABVs. The higher the alcohol content in the ferment, the more heads that get carried over; lower alcohol content is cleaner since the yeast are “less drunk” and produce fewer off flavors since they are less stressed. ”

More info on that Denizen Merchant's Reserve blend... →

From the source (Denizen Rum): a little more background on the blend that makes up Denizen Merchant's Reserve, and its relation to the Trader Vic's Mai Tai. It's like bonus material for episode 7 and episode 30 of this here show.

“While many  brands do not tend to tout the process of blending that takes place across the industry to varying degrees, there have been a breadth of new rum brands in recent years that  celebrate a resurgence of old style rums such as the colonial American style of Medford rum being produced once again in New England and also rums that have a more international provenance, being a blend of styles from different islands.”