Rum

Black Pearl

Name: Black Pearl
Yield: 1 servings

Glass: Rocks

A modern bourbon-and-blackstrap sipper from Lani Kai NY, structurally a tiki-leaning Old Fashioned.

rum bourbon modern-craft stirred tiki blackstrap

Ingredients

rich demerara syrup (1 bar spoon)
Fee Brothers Whiskey Barrel-Aged Bitters (1 dash)
blackstrap rum (0.75 oz)
bonded bourbon (1.5 oz)
orange twist (1)

Created by Joseph Swifka while head bartender at Lani Kai in lower Manhattan in 2010, the Black Pearl is one of the modern-craft tiki revival's quieter contributions: not a fruit-and-orgeat tropical but a stirred, spirit-forward sipper that uses Cruzan Blackstrap rum like a bitters component, riding bonded bourbon.¹ Structurally it is a tiki-aware Old Fashioned, a 2:1 bourbon-to-rum split, a barspoon of rich demerara, a dash of barrel-aged bitters, and it reads as a bridge between the Manhattan / Old Fashioned canon and the molasses-rum thread that runs from the Black Stripe through Mai-Kai's Black Magic.²

Brand recommendations. Best: Old Forester Signature 100 Proof for the bonded bourbon; Cruzan Blackstrap for the rum (the spec is brand-specific and not easily substituted); Fee Brothers Whiskey Barrel-Aged Bitters; BG Reynolds or Small Hand Foods rich demerara syrup. Economical: Evan Williams Bottled-in-Bond bourbon; Cruzan Blackstrap (the value bottling is already the canonical pour); Angostura as a bitters stand-in if Fee Barrel-Aged isn't on hand.

Instructions

In a mixing glass combine rich demerara syrup (2:1), Fee Brothers Whiskey Barrel-Aged Bitters, blackstrap rum, and bonded bourbon.
Add ice and stir until well chilled, about .
Strain over a large ice cube in a rocks glass.
Garnish with an orange twist, expressing the oils over the surface before dropping in.

Sources

"Black Pearl." Kindred Cocktails. https://kindredcocktails.com/cocktail/black-pearl (accessed 2026-05-03), confirms Joseph Swifka as creator at Lani Kai (NYC, 2010), the bourbon / Cruzan Blackstrap / rich demerara / Fee Brothers Whiskey Barrel-Aged Bitters spec, and the Old Forester 100-proof recommendation; originally published in The Wall Street Journal, March 5, 2011. ↩
Cate & Cate, Smuggler's Cove (2016), section on blackstrap rum in modern tiki, supporting context for using Cruzan Blackstrap as a bitters-style structural ingredient rather than a featured base. ↩