When I go out drinking and am “off the clock,” I tend to gravitate toward simpler cocktails. I love spirits and many of the ones I love are fairly complex in their own right. I find myself cringing at some bartenders putting everything but the kitchen sink in their drinks. The “original” cocktail was simply spirits, sugar, water, bitters, and ice. It doesn’t take much more than that to make something that is extremely delicious and balanced. While I love the Negroni, which is Campari, vermouth, and gin (always stirred, never shaken), it’s really the Old Fashioned that’s my comfort drink of choice.

Sitting at a great bar where I want to spend some time and slowly sip a cocktail, you’ll often find an Old Fashioned in front of me. In Portland there’s a fantastic little bar called Rum Club. It opened over the summer and is steps away from another bar/restaurant from the same owner. In many ways, Rum Club is version 2.0 of the owner’s vision of a great bar. All the lessons learned running a larger successful bar have gone into making Rum Club something special. Small, intimate, but never overly serious, Rum Club has become sort of an “it” place in town for people who work in the food and beverage service industry, and guys like me, who spend their time writing and drinking, drinking and writing.

While there are many other kinds of spirits on the Rum Club menu, it’s the Rum Club Old Fashioned that I enjoy the most. It is built on the same concept as the original drink, but instead of whiskey, this Old Fashioned is a blend of rums (Bacardi 8 and Smith & Cross), a sugar cube, and Angostura bitters. It’s topped off with an orange peel and a big rock (aka ice cube), which lets you sit and sip the drink over a long period of time without it getting really watery. It’s a very simple drink but with a ton of complexity from the Smith & Cross Jamaican Rum, the most flavorful rum I’ve ever had. Jamaican Rum is known for its deep, toasted (almost burnt), sugary molasses notes and an underlying “funk” that is simply divine. On its own Smith & Cross can be a little overwhelming, so mixing it with the sweet and mellow Bacardi 8 year rum makes the drink far less assertive and wild.

There’s something amazing that happens when you get the right drink at the right bar on the right night. For me, Rum Club along with the Rum Club Old Fashioned have come together on more than one occasion for nights that I’ll never forget.