Falernum: History, Heresy, and Homebrewing
(originally published in Drink Me Magazine, Issue 13, April/May 2011)
Maybe you were flipping through the pages of a favorite cocktail book. Maybe perusing the classic rum-based drinks on the menu at a fine tiki bar. Under any of these circumstances you may have encountered the word “falernum” and wondered about this unusual item cropping up amongst familiar ingredients.
Wonder no more, fellow cocktail enthusiast: falernum is a tasty and accessible liqueur that adds essential spice to certain traditional island or island-inspired drinks, and one or two modern classics. You’ll need falernum if you want to make yourself a Corn ‘n Oil, or a Chartreuse Swizzle — and you should want to, because those drinks are delicious (more on them in a moment). If you cannot find a bottle of falernum at your local liquor store, it is easy enough to make a tasty batch at home – provided you can locate a decent overproof rum, some limes, and the right spices.
Falernum is by all accounts from Barbados and therefore Barbadian (or “Bajan,” if you’re serious about this kind of thing). The primary flavors in falernum are clove and lime, frequently accented by other spices such as allspice or ginger. It appears to have evolved from a sort of streamlined, bottled rum punch to a mixer for very dark rum that adds citrus, sweeteners, and spice all at once. The proper pronunciation is “fah-learn-um.” Per the 2003 book A-Z of Barbados Heritage: “There is a joke making the rounds which purports to explain how falernum got its name. In one version, the tourist, after tasting the drink, asks the old man how he made this delicious liqueur. After a few moments hesitation the old Barbadian replies ‘you have fuh learn um’ (you have to learn it).”
Like any good cocktail enthusiast with an overflowing liquor cabinet, I started my falernum research by hunting down a bottle of the stuff. I learned that one Bajan producer, John D. Taylor, exports its “Velvet” brand falernum to the United States, thanks to the fine people at Haus Alpenz. The Fee Brothers from Rochester, New York, also make a non-alcoholic falernum.
I found the Velvet Falernum to be a sweet, slightly syrupy, pale amber liqueur that tastes strongly of cloves and more meekly of ginger, cinnamon, and lime. Quite lovely. Since the Velvet brand is only 22 proof, I tried a few sips neat and then placed the bottle in my refrigerator for safe-keeping. (A good rule of thumb: an opened bottle of anything less than 50 proof will eventually spoil sitting on your counter or in your liquor cabinet.)
Having established that I liked to drink falernum, I set out to learn what others thought — how they use falernum in cocktails, and which brand or style they prefer. In so doing, I learned that perhaps the most interesting thing about falernum is its propensity to spawn controversy and confusion, without the need for a single sip.
To read about falernum, especially online, is to wade into a disorienting morass of conflicting opinions. One self-styled expert on a tiki-phile web forum swears that the Fee Brothers’ version is unsurpassed for use in the cocktail recipes made famous by renowned tiki pioneers “Trader” Vic Bergeron and Donn Beach (a.k.a. Don the Beachcomber). Another expert swears that the old paper-umbrella crowd would never have been caught dead using non-alcoholic falernum, and that the Velvet brand is precisely the same as the stuff poured in the first legendary tiki bars like Trader Vic’s and Don the Beachcomber’s half a century ago.
The issue is complicated further by what we might regard as gaps in the historical record. For years, falernum of any kind was unavailable or sporadically available to Americans, due to distribution issues. The Velvet brand obtained distribution in major cities near the beginning of this century but severed ties with that distributor in 2007. In 2008, Haus Alpenz began distributing Velvet Falernum in major markets. During the gaps in availability, desperate drink writers and mixologists began circulating their recipes for homemade falernum, and comparing notes. Diving into those waters yields even more questions, with predictable dogmatic energy on both sides. Is a 151-proof demerara rum necessary, or desirable? Should one toast the spices, or at least “wake them up” before adding them? Regular simple syrup, or “cold process”? It’s like something out of the French New Wave classic Last Year at Marienbad: corridors that end in doors opening out onto more corridors …
Better just to dive in and start making drinks.I started with a batch of falernum made according to Paul Clarke’s “Falernum #8” recipe:
6 ounces Wray & Nephew overproof White Rum
zest of 9 medium limes, removed with a microplane grater or sharp vegetable peeler, with no white pith
40 whole cloves (buy fresh ones — not the cloves that have been in your spice rack since last Christmas)
1 1/2 ounce, by weight, peeled, julienned fresh ginger
Combine these ingredients in a jar and seal, letting the mixture soak for 24 hours. Then, strain through moistened cheesecloth, squeezing the solids to extract the last, flavorful bits of liquid.
Add:
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
14 ounces cold process 2:1 simple syrup (two parts sugar to one part water, shaken in a jar or bottle WITHOUT HEAT until all the sugar is dissolved)
4 1/2 ounces fresh, strained lime juice
Shake it all together and serve.
Demerara rum: A rum, of any color and proof, made from demerara sugar.
Demerara sugar: A brown sugar made by partially refining sugar cane extract. Aka “natural brown sugar,” “turbinado sugar” (Non-demerara brown sugar is made by adding molasses to fully refined sugar).
“Waking up” spices: a process of lightly crushing whole, fresh spices to enhance flavor. Commonly done with a mortar and pestle.
“Cold process” simple syrup: sugar syrup made without heat, as in the recipe for Falernum #8 below.
I sampled this falernum side-by-side with the Velvet brand, slightly chilled and then in two different cocktails. I did not sample any non-alcoholic falernum, on the grounds that it constitutes heresy (ok, it was really because I couldn’t find a bottle quickly enough for this experiment). And I eschewed more elaborate tiki drinks (like the Bermuda Rum Swizzle or the Jet Pilot) based on my firm belief that it is impossible to keep that many kinds of rum in the house at the same time. That’s why God (and Martin Cate) invented San Francisco’s Smuggler’s Cove.
The homemade falernum was unquestionably brighter and more citrus-forward than the Velvet brand, with a predominant lime smell. The overproof rum also played more heavily into the homebrew’s flavor profile, leaving telltale grassy notes in the finish. Both varieties were appropriately thick and syrupy, but the Velvet Falernum’s flavors seemed more gently layered, and the clove notes were much more substantial in the Velvet brand.
Likely for that reason, the Velvet played better with Cruzan Black Strap Rum in the classic Bajan beverage, a Corn ‘n Oil (crushed ice; 2 oz. rum; 1 1/2 oz falernum; juice of half a lime, with the hull dropped in for garnish; dash Angostura bitters). Although the difference was slight, Velvet’s stronger clove notes paired with the dark rum to create a taste sensation closer to rum-and-Coke, a classic that became a classic for a good reason.
By contrast, the homemade falernum worked slightly better than the Velvet in renowned bartender and cocktail creator Marco Dionysos’s modern classic, the Chartreuse Swizzle (1 ¼ oz. green Chartreuse; 1 oz. pineapple juice; ¾ oz. lime juice; ½ oz. falernum; swizzled with crushed ice). The fresh citrus notes in the homebrew brightened up this drink and shone a spotlight on the delicious harmony between herbaceous Chartreuse and sweet pineapple, which makes the Swizzle such a revelation.
For my next batch of homebrew, I resolved to implement bartender/blogger Jeffrey Morgenthaler’s changes to the Clarke recipe. In his variant Mr. Morgenthaler soaks the cloves in rum for 48 hours before adding the lime zest and ginger. He soaks these ingredients another 24 hours before straining and mixing with the almond extract, syrup, and juice. I expect this would amplify the volume of the clove flavors to the proper level.
Of course, that decision raised a whole new set of questions: What of cocktail historian Darcy O’Neil’s research showing that nineteenth century falernum was basically a rum punch: just lime juice, sugar syrup, rum, and water — no almonds, ginger, or cloves? Should I honor that tradition by cutting back on the spices considerably? I became dizzy, picturing myself lurching down those endless Marienbad hallways again.
Just then I received an e-mail from Eric Seed, head of Haus Alpenz. On the difference between Velvet and other brands of falernum, he wrote simply: “The VF recipe is the Barbados tradition … other recipes and styles reflect other origins and preferences.”
In other words: calm down, it’s only falernum. We like it this way, but there are lots of other tasty ways to layer these flavors. Choose one that you like and mix yourself a nice strong drink. Soon you’ll forget about the disorienting hallways of endless possibilities, and start imagining the brilliant rays of the warm Barbados sun.
