Rum

Black Marlin

Name: Black Marlin
Yield: 1 servings

Glass: Double Old-Fashioned

Donn Beach 1937-era dark-Jamaican sour, citrus-and-honey forward with a Pernod-and-bitters perfume.

rum tiki pre-tiki jamaican shaken lime

Ingredients

fresh lime juice (0.75 oz)
honey syrup (0.5 oz)
Pernod (4 drops)
Angostura bitters (2 dash)
gold Cuban-style rum (0.75 oz)
dark Jamaican rum (1.5 oz)
lime wheel (1)

Sourcing note. Black Marlin appears among the deep-cut 1937 Hollywood-era Don the Beachcomber drink names, but the published spec is fragmentary, Berry's Sippin' Safari and Remixed reconstruct dozens of these from the Dick Santiago, Hank Riddle, and Tony Ramos notebooks, and Black Marlin sits in that family of dark-Jamaican-forward sours that Donn was building in the years between the original Zombie (1934) and the Pearl Diver (late 1930s).¹ This is a reconstruction in that idiom: dark Jamaican as the loud voice, gold Cuban-style for round, lime and honey for bone structure, and the signature Donn perfume of Pernod-and-Angostura.²

Brand recommendations. Best: Smith & Cross or Hampden Estate 8 for the dark Jamaican; Plantation 3 Stars or Caña Brava for the gold Cuban-style; Pernod Absinthe; B.G. Reynolds or Small Hand Foods honey syrup. Economical: Coruba or Myers's Original Dark for the Jamaican; Bacardi 8 for the Cuban-style; Herbsaint for the absinthe note; homemade 2:1 honey-mix.

Instructions

In a shaker combine fresh lime juice, honey syrup, Pernod, Angostura bitters, gold Cuban-style rum, and dark Jamaican rum.
Add ice and shake hard for .
Strain into a double old-fashioned glass over fresh crushed ice.
Garnish with a lime wheel.

Sources

Berry, Sippin' Safari (2017 ed.), Donn Beach Hollywood-era catalog chapters, documents Berry's reconstruction methodology against the Dick Santiago, Hank Riddle, and Tony Ramos notebooks; Black Marlin sits in the same dark-Jamaican-forward family as Pearl Diver and Cobra's Fang. ↩
Berry, Beachbum Berry Remixed (2010), Donn Beach catalog, frames the Donn signature perfume of Pernod-and-Angostura over a dark-Jamaican / gold-Cuban-style split as the late-1930s house template the Black Marlin sits inside. ↩
Beachbum Berry, "Sippin' Safari." https://beachbumberry.com/publication-sippin-safari.html (accessed 2026-05-03), the canonical Berry web home for the Donn Beach reconstructions; the Black Marlin is one of the deep-cut names whose published spec remains fragmentary, and this file's measurement bill is a reconstruction in the Berry idiom rather than a transcription from a primary source.