Sip Spiced Rum This Spring

Spring is here, the skies are blue, which means you can shed your own winter blues by filling up your cup and toasting to a new season of trying new things, like spiced rum in spring. Spiced rum, normally thought of as a liquor meant for fall or winter to warm you up, can actually be used to make a variety of great cocktails as the weather warms up.

To ease you in to this new mentality for spiced rum usage, let’s start with a transitional winter to spring drink—one that bodes well in snow but also great for colder, rainy days of spring. A Spiced Rum Old Fashioned will give you the warming effects during April showers, reminding you a bit of the bitter cold days, but also will propel you into bringing on the May flowers. To make, muddle cane sugar cubes and bitters in a shaker, then add the rum, cloves, stick of cinnamon and orange zest and shake it ‘til that winter weight starts falling off. Next, add ice to the shaker and stir, fill up a glass with large ice cubes and strain that bad boy over those rocks. Garnish with cinnamon and orange zest.

Now that you’re warmed up and ready to really play ball, it’s time to ride into spring with a Cable Car. This one’s just three ingredients–spiced rum, lemon sour mix and orange curacao served in a martini glass. Seems simple but it’ll be sure to get you buzzing like the bees.

With baseball season starting in full swing, there’s nothing better than a good tailgate. For the daytime game, the perfect day-drinking beer comes with rum in it and it’s called a Salty Pirate. Score some “radler style” beer and Captain Morgan Cannon Blast Spiced Rum from the liquor store across the stadium parking lot. Pour together into that red solo cup (which you should rim with kosher salt and cayenne powder to give it a kick) and squeeze in a lime. This particular rum has notes of citrus which will pair well with the citrusy radler you got there. As long as your sailor mouth doesn’t come out too salty before passing through ballpark security, you should be good to go and ready to trash talk the away team from the nosebleeders.

As the party people start to come out of winter hibernation, a nighttime drink filled with spiced rum will keep you going as you fist pump at the club. Ask the bartender for that Long Island Iced Tea. A classic, but dangerously fun because not only does it have spiced rum, it also has vodka, gin, tequila, triple sec and some cola to keep you awake all night long.

And as you round out the shift to spring, something refreshing like a Mojito will keep you hydrated as you plant those flowers on a nice sunny day. Drop a few mint leaves into the bottom a glass then add crushed ice, spiced rum, sugar and lime, and muddle. Top it off with soda water and finish where you started by topping with fresh mint leaves. Some may think of this as more of a summer drink, but there’s nothing wrong with getting ahead of the game and preparing for next season.

Spiced rum is about to take spring on by storm. With a whole slew of spiced rum cocktails to fit any day or occasion during this time of year, watching the flowers bloom and listening to the birds chirping is about to get even better with a spring drink in hand.