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Queens Park Swizzle

Layered drink with mint rum lime juice and bitters on top in a tall glass.
Photo by Andy Sewell

If you like mojitos, you’ll like this minty swizzle from the Queen’s Park Hotel in Trinidad. The swizzle is a category of cocktails named for the special bar tool used to mix all crushed-ice cocktails in the days before blenders. A swizzle stick is a long stick made with three to five forked branches originally made from the allspice bush. If you don’t have one, though, you can use a bar spoon to churn the drink with a similar motion, rotating the stick by rubbing your hands back and forth against each other with the stick between them. 

Feel free to try subbing in aged rum for the white rum (or a mix of both) for more complexity in this easy cocktail, or try two dashes each of Angostura and Peychaud’s bitters instead of four dashes of the Angostura.

Recipe information

  • Total Time

    2 minutes

  • Yield

    Makes 1 cocktail

Ingredients

8–10 mint leaves
¾ oz. (22 ml) 1:1 simple syrup
2 oz. (60 ml) white rum
1 oz. (30 ml) fresh lime juice
4 dashes Angostura bitters
Mint sprig, to garnish

Preparation

  1. Step 1

    Combine the mint leaves and simple syrup in a Collins glass and muddle gently.

    Step 2

    Add rum and lime juice, fill the glass two-thirds full with crushed ice and swizzle until the glass is frosted.

    Step 3

    Add the bitters and top off with more crushed ice to fill the glass. Garnish with a mint sprig.

The cover of the cookbook Spirited by Adrienne Stillman
Reprinted from Spirited: Cocktails from Around the World, by Adrienne Stillman. © 2020 Phaidon Press Buy the full book from Amazon.

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