A Rum Monte is shorthand for the shot of choice of a lot of bartenders,
literally just a shot which is half dark rum and half a Amaro Montenegro,
so it's lower in alcohol and easier than drinking straight spirit, with a nicely balanced sweetness.
So the Rum Monte Sour inserts that combination into a classic sour to delicious effect.
The rum is really just there to provide sort of a backbone for the citrus and spice of
the Montenegro, which is an amaro from Bologna. It's apparently the best selling amaro in Italy,
which is obviously saying something. It's definitely a really good addition to
any home bar, especially when you're first starting to dabble with Italian bitters,
and if you're not sure what I'm talking about then check out our Amaro master class here.
It can be used as an accent in lots of drinks because there's really very few
spirits that it doesn't go with but it is kind of stealing the show here.
This cocktail is kind of like hiding veggies and pasta sauce for kids. The citrus and the
egg white brightens and softens the more bitter notes of the Montenegro, which is already very
much on the sweeter and more approachable end of the category, because it's got lovely orange,
cola and vanilla notes, so definitely a gateway amaro cocktail for any doubters out there.
I do often add bitters to sours, but this doesn't really need it
because there's quite a lot of Montenegro in there and it's technically a bitter itself,
so plenty of those spicy notes going on already.
Similarly it's much less sugar than usual because
the Montenegro already contains a fair amount of sugar, so you don't really need much.
You could absolutely emit the rum and go 'full Monte' in which case you may not actually need
any sugar at all because it will have loads of body and sweetness, or if you want to
go a little bit boozier you could go half and half or even flip the ratio and have more rum.
In fact, if rum isn't your thing at all then it works really well with whiskey too,
so definitely a very versatile cocktail blueprint to play with.
So first we're going to get our egg white ready. Just give this a little tap,
and filter out your yolk.
And I just like to give it actually like
almost a little chop just because it makes it a wee bit easier to pour.
It's never going to be the easiest thing to control,
but does you know slightly stop you getting it in big glops.
And then we're going to do an orange twist garnish, so just take a nice
thick strip off your orange, trim off all of your white pith and then you can
absolutely leave it rustic, I'm just going to trim this one down slightly.
Why not? Go wild. Feeling a bit crazy you know.
And then in our tins we're just gonna go a little 15 mils of rum.
And then 45 mils of our affectionately named Monte.
So literally just about 5 ml of sugar syrup, if that.
It's really yeah, again a bit of a kind of personal preference thing,
the Montenegro is fairly sweet, I just like a little bit because it balances out
nicely with your sort of, with the lemon juice and just gives it a bit more body.
And then we're going to go a full 30 mils of lemon juice, it's really nice and bright and citrusy.
And your egg white.
Then we'll pop these together, give it a bit of a shake,
so without ice to emulsify the egg. Make sure you hold your tins tightly.
See, it's all nice and foamy. So we'll add some ice and shake again until it's chilled.
Delicious.
Then we're just going to use our Hawthorne strainer to hold the ice back.
I've got a nice little block of ice in here already,
let's just pour through the fine strainer.
I do always like to fine strain when you've got egg white in there because
it just gets all the little ice chips out that might sort of ruin your nice foamy head.
Fold your orange twist over the top of the drink to expel some oils.
This one's not too bad, but just because obviously, the you know,
the Montenegro and the rum are both just kind of brown, you've got the lemon in there so it's not
the worst color in the world, but it's not the most interesting color, so that's why
I quite like using a little kind of colored glass here.
And then we're just gonna pop in our orange twist
and there we have a Rum Monte Sour, so now you know.
Let's dive in.
So bright and fun this one, it's almost like,
like tangy cola bottles you know like the kind of fizzy ones.
Because you've got so much kind of citrus coming through from the Montenegro as well as obviously
like a fair amount of lemon juice in there, and you do get those kind of woody spices just like
finishing off at the end and heaps of that kind of cola, cola sort of note, but at the same time
it's more just I guess, I tend to find maybe like an Amaretto Sour or something after a few sips it
does get a little bit too sweet, because there's just no balancing really, whereas here like that
real kind of dry finish from the amaro makes you definitely want to want to keep go- I mean
I always say this I was want to go back for more really, but it really is true in this one.
So I think this would be definitely a really good kind of bit of a Trojan Horse
if you do have someone in your life that maybe thinks that they don't like amaro
because they've only ever tried like a Negroni or something that's really 'in your face' bitter,
this would definitely be a good one to to start them out off and then be like ah ha!
That was actually an amaro that you drank and enjoyed there.