Summer 2016 | Sea Island Life Magazine Spring/Summer 2016 | Page 51

TASTE OF
THE TROPICS

Sea Island Director of Wines and Spirits
Ryanne Carrier shares the resort’s
recipe for a tiki cocktail classic.

Hale Pele in Portland, Ore., is one example of a modern tiki bar.

“Very soon [after the publication of the
“Grog Log”], bartenders started to play
with the old tiki formulas, as they should,”
Berry says. “It’s what Don the Beachcomber
and Trader Vic did in the 1930s, when they
improved upon Caribbean drinks like the
planter’s punch. A lot of ingredients were
coming into play that weren’t available back in
the 1930s through 1950s—new spirits, exotic
fruits and bitters.” For contemporary cocktail
enthusiasts, the combination was irresistible.

Tomorrow’s Tiki

BOTTOM LEFT PHOTO BY ANNENE KAYE

Nowadays, tiki bars and the cocktails they’re
known for are commonplace in all major cities

Latitude 29’s mai tai, Zombie and Navy Grog

across the country, and their reach continues to expand. “When I first got into tiki culture, I could name nearly every bar around,”
says Blair Reynolds, the owner of a Portlandbased tiki bar called Hale Pele, as well as
B.G. Reynolds’ Syrups, a small-batch line of
handcrafted syrups, bitters and cocktail mixers inspired by vintage tiki drinks. “Tiki now
escapes me—there are bars that have been
open for a year that I’ve never heard of, in
places I’ve never heard of.”
Part of the appeal, Reynolds says, has to do
with the inherent flexibility involved in making tiki cocktails. “There’s copious room for
experimentation in tiki cocktailing because
the formulations of these drinks are open to
interpretation,” he continues. “Tiki drinks
typically find their origin in a drink called the
planter’s punch—just remember ‘one of sour,
two of sweet, three of strong, four of weak.’ All
different combinations of that simple formula
can be used to create a tiki drink, but so many
more ingredients are available now, including
fresh fruits such as mangoes and kiwis, which
weren’t available in the 1950s.
“There’s also a lot more experimentation
going on in the rum world, not only with getting back to higher-quality overproof rums,
but there are people doing things like putting
rum barrels under the sea to age them differently,” he continues. “And there are a lot of
new American rum producers, whereas there
were virtually none during the 1950s.”
Similar to Reynolds, Berry also now owns
a tiki bar, the New Orleans-based Latitude 29,
where he serves refined versions of old school

PIÑA COLADA
2 ounces Don Q Rum
1 ounce pineapple juice
2 ounces Coco Lopez
1 ounce lime juice
½ ounce velvet falernum
Pineapple slice, for garnish
METHOD:
On the rocks: Combine all ingredients
in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain
into a glass with crushed ice.
Frozen: Fill an empty ]X\