Rum

Tortuga No. 2

Name: Tortuga No. 2
Yield: 1 servings

Glass: Coupe

Trader Vic's stripped-down 1948 follow-up to the original Tortuga, light Puerto Rican rum, vermouth, cacao, and a touch of curaçao and grenadine.

rum tiki mid-century shaken cuban lime vermouth

Ingredients

fresh lime juice (0.5 oz)
grenadine (1 tsp)
sweet vermouth (0.5 oz)
white creme de cacao (0.25 oz)
orange curacao (1 tsp)
light Puerto Rican rum (1 oz)
orange peel twist (1)

The Tortuga No. 2 is a structurally distinct sibling to the 1947 Tortuga (already in the corpus at rank 46).¹ Where the original Tortuga is a baroque multi-juice rum sour built around 151-proof Demerara, sweet vermouth, and three citrus juices, the No. 2 strips the formula down to a single rum (light Puerto Rican), a single citrus (lime), and the Tortuga's signature vermouth-cacao-curaçao-grenadine spine, served up in a coupe rather than swizzled in a chimney over crushed ice.² Berry catalogs both versions in Remixed and notes the No. 2 reads as Vic's lighter, drier reimagining of his own creation a year on, closer to a sour than a tiki swizzle.¹

Brand recommendations. Best: Caña Brava or Don Q Cristal for the light Puerto Rican rum; Carpano Antica or Cocchi Vermouth di Torino sweet vermouth; Tempus Fugit or Marie Brizard white crème de cacao; Pierre Ferrand Dry Curaçao; homemade grenadine or Liber & Co. Real Grenadine. Economical: Bacardi Superior; Martini & Rossi Rosso; DeKuyper white crème de cacao; Senior Curaçao of Curaçao; Rose's Grenadine.

Instructions

In a shaker combine fresh lime juice, grenadine, sweet vermouth, white creme de cacao, orange curacao, and light Puerto Rican rum.
Add ice cubes and shake for .
Strain into a chilled coupe.
Garnish with an orange peel twist.

Sources

Berry, Beachbum Berry Remixed (2010), Tortuga No. 2 entry, the modern reconstruction documenting both Tortuga versions and framing the No. 2 as Vic's lighter, drier follow-up. ↩
Bergeron, Trader Vic's Bartender's Guide, Revised (1972), p. 187, only a single "TORTUGA" entry appears in BG72 (the original swizzle, cited at #046); no separate "Tortuga No. 2" entry is published under that name in any of Vic's books. The "No. 2" designation is Berry-era reconstruction language distinguishing the lighter coupe-served sibling from Vic's original chimney swizzle, not a Vic-published title. ↩
Beachbum Berry, https://beachbumberry.com/publication-remixed.html (accessed 2026-05-03), publication source for the spec this file follows.