Rum

Shingle Stain

Name: Shingle Stain
Yield: 1 servings

Glass: Chimney

Trader Vic's 1946 dark Jamaican-and-agricole sour, named for the bloody-red stain pimento dram and grenadine leave on the shaker tin.

rum tiki mid-century shaken jamaican lime allspice

Ingredients

fresh lime juice (0.5 oz)
grenadine (0.5 oz)
Angostura bitters (2 dash)
allspice dram (0.25 oz)
Martinique rhum agricole (0.75 oz)
aged pot-still Jamaican rum (1 oz)
mint sprig (1)

The Shingle Stain first appears in Vic's 1946 Trader Vic's Book of Food & Drink, a dark Jamaican rum sour layered with rhum agricole, pimento dram, and grenadine, named for the dark red mark the drink leaves on a wooden bar shingle.¹ It belongs to Vic rather than to the Donn Beach catalog, but the spice-and-grenadine profile is unmistakably in the Donn idiom Vic was studying at the time, and Berry includes the drink in his Trader Vic chapter of Remixed on the strength of its 1946 publication date.² Vic later (1972) revised the spec into a softer cranberry-pineapple version; the 1946 original below is the one Berry-school revivalists pour.³

Brand recommendations. Best: Smith & Cross or Hamilton Jamaican Pot Still Black for the dark Jamaican; Rhum J.M. blanc or Neisson Réserve Spéciale for the agricole; St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram; homemade grenadine or Liber & Co. Real Grenadine. Economical: Coruba Dark or Myers's Original Dark; La Favorite Ambré; Hamilton Pimento Liqueur; Small Hand Foods grenadine.

Instructions

In a shaker combine fresh lime juice, grenadine, Angostura bitters, allspice dram, Martinique rhum agricole, and aged pot-still Jamaican rum.
Add cracked ice and shake for .
Pour unstrained into a chimney glass filled with fresh cracked ice.
Garnish with a mint sprig.

Sources

Bergeron, Trader Vic's Book of Food and Drink (1946), pp. 67–68, Vic's first publication of the Shingle Stain spec; the dark-red-bar-shingle naming claim is Vic's own. Vic's authorship of the Shingle Stain is generally accepted in modern historiography (no countervailing Donn-era claim surfaces in Berry). ↩
Berry, Beachbum Berry Remixed (2010), Trader Vic chapter, includes the Shingle Stain on the strength of the 1946 publication date and frames the spice-and-grenadine profile as Vic's adoption of the Donn idiom he was studying at the time. ↩
Bergeron, Trader Vic's Bartender's Guide, Revised (1972), p. 182, documents Vic's later softer cranberry-pineapple revision; this file preserves the 1946 original that revival bartenders pour. ↩
"The Shingle Stain Cocktail from Trader Vic's." Ultimate Mai Tai, 19 August 2024. https://ultimatemaitai.com/2024/08/19/the-shingle-stain-cocktail-from-trader-vics/ (accessed 2026-05-03), modern published transcription of both the 1946 and 1972 specs; consistent with this file's measurement bill for the 1946 original.