Jasper's Jamaican Recipe

Let's start the weekend right--with a cocktail recipe from Paul Clarke (The Cocktail Chronicles). Need more than one? Hit up the archives. Cheers!

Six weeks into winter and there's no end in sight. Oh, sure, if you cheat and flip a page or two forward in the calendar you'll see pictures of sunshine and crocuses, but for now it's still snowmen. And outside? Don't even look out the window--at the end of January, with a long slog before spring still ahead of us, you really don't want to know what the weather's like out there.

By now some of the warming drinks are getting a bit old; sure, there's nothing like a hot toddy when the temperature takes another nose dive, but drinks made at this part of the winter start to be more about escaping rather than embracing the season. So this evening try closing the blinds, turning up the thermostat and putting on some island music while pretending it's not the dead of winter. To help the process along, mix up a Jasper's Jamaican.

This drink is adapted from Trader Vic's Rum Cookery & Drinkery from 1974. Vic says the drink comes from Jasper LeFranc, who worked the bar at the Bay Roc Hotel in Montego Bay, Jamaica. Built similar to a daiquiri with a base of buttery Jamaican rum (though according to this guy, a Demerara rum from Guyana works equally well), Jasper's Jamaican is given a little shimmy by the addition of a touch of allspice liqueur. While impossible to find as recently as a year ago, St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram is lying around many well-stocked liquor stores.

Hide the coat and the scarves in the closet for a night and turn off the Weather Channel for a while. With a Jasper's Jamaican in hand, you can take an island vacation right in your own living room.