Dark 'n' Stormy Cocktail

Fill the glass with ice. With the help of a bar spoon, swirl the ice inside the glass, which will cool the sides of the glass much faster.

Measure and pour 3 1/2 OZ (100 ml) of ginger beer directly into the glass.

Measure with the jigger and pour 2 OZ (60 ml) Gosling's Black Seal rum into the glass. Pour the rum very gently so that it does not mix with the ginger beer and remains on the surface. This step can be done with the help of the back of a bar spoon to make it go down even more slowly.

Garnish with a lime wedge and it's ready to serve.

History

The Dark 'n' Stormy is the national drink of Bermuda and is associated with Gosling's Black Seal, which is the rum used in this drink.

In 1860, the Gosling Brothers distillery in Hamilton marketed a rum and the officers of the nearby Royal Navy base became avid consumers of it and it soon began to be sold in bottles of champagne recovered from the officers' mess, for obvious reasons of convenience. The bottles were sealed with black sealing wax and the rum was nicknamed 'black seal' due to the colour of the seal. Gosling Brothers liked this name and began marketing it as Gosling's Black Seal Rum.

In 1874, the English merchant William John Barritt opened a convenience store near the base where he sold, among other merchandise, self-bottled sodas in the back of the shop. Apparently, the island's first ginger beer was bottled here, which is still produced in Bermuda today and has been marketed under the name of its founder for five generations.

It is said that in one of the taverns near the base, some time after Barritt's ginger beer was put on the market, a customer, most likely a sailor, had Gosling Black Seal mixed with Barritt's ginger beer and lime juice. It didn't take long for Gosling Brothers to register the name 'Dark 'n' Stormy' to maintain a sort of paternity of the cocktail, still owned by the company today.

For years the Dark 'n' Stormy was a difficult cocktail to propose, as ginger beer was practically unavailable on the market and for this reason it remained only in recipe books. Now that ginger beer is easier to find, this cocktail is once again the protagonist of mixed drinking.

Variations

There are actually no variations of this cocktail that if it is not prepared with Gosling rum it is not a true Dark 'n' Stormy. To find thirst-quenching variants, always based on ginger beer, we recommend the Moscow Mule, although much less intense in flavour.

Curiosity

It's the only drink whose name is a registered trademark, belonging to the Gosling Brothers, a rum company, which claims to have invented it in the archipelago of Bermuda shortly after the First World War. Since 2011 it has been an official IBA cocktail.