Pure Mango Tango: A Natural Cocktail with Bacardi Reserva Ocho Rum
You’ve probably enjoyed natural wine, but what is a natural cocktail? Does such a category even exist? Well, it does in the future-forward section on Jigger & Pony’s IDENTITY menu.
The world of wine has had a significant shift in the past decade with the natural wine movement taking off, thanks to its perception as a healthier, more organic option due to less chemicals used during the process of growing grapes, as well as less additives and added sugar. With our Natural Cocktails, we sought to create drinks with the same ethos of minimal intervention. Without a definitive formal categorisation (much like natural wine), we first had to give parameters to what we would consider ‘natural’.
The first and perhaps most natural thing we looked at was natural flavours. Many cocktails today, including a number of the drinks on the same menu at Jigger & Pony, make good use of modern technology and techniques - such as the rotovap, centrifuge and clarification - to control and perfect every element in the drink. So, we looked to an older style of cocktail that focuses on flavours derived mainly from seasonal or fresh ingredients. The other, is the use of natural sugars. With the rise of health consciousness, sugar consumption is declining, and for good reason. In fact, the Singapore’s war on diabetes has launched a new regulations system requiring businesses to ‘grade‘ non alcoholic beverages.
And within this binary framework, our Pure Mango Tango was born.
Pure Mango Tango: Bacardi Reserva Ocho Rum, Empirical Spirits Ayuuk, orange, mango
A cocktail with no uniform recipe, or even a skeleton of one, the Mango Tango is thought to have been created between Mexico and the Caribbean islands - given its popularity on cruises and sun drenched resorts. At Jigger & Pony, our natural take on this vacation-worthy tipple gets its profile from fresh mangoes and oranges. We pair the full, natural flavours of these juicy fruits with the complex golden Caribbean rum, Bacardi Reserva Ocho.
Distilled and aged for more than three years under the Puerto Rican sun, this rounded, warming rum perfectly complements the cocktail’s tropical notes with its dried fruit, caramelised nut and oaky vanilla flavours. We lift the rum’s brown and pepper spice accents with a touch of Oaxaca-harvested Pasilla Mixe chili spirit while a dash of Haitian agricole rums adds lends herbal hints and freshness.
Garnished with fresh mango leaf, the drink is sweet and sour, yet dry and clean. With no sugar added, relying on Bacardi Reserva Ocho as well as the fresh produce of the day, embrace and enjoy the slight difference in taste each time you enjoy a Pure Mango Tango.