Cocktails for a Crowd : Rum Punch made with Tea and Fruit Juice

Nick recently said to me, “You were right and I was wrong”. It happened after I had suggested that I make a double batch of this Rum Punch while we were preparing for a dinner party.

I thought it would make a good pre-dinner cocktail, and he thought people would prefer the other offerings of wine, beer or dry martinis.

Well, half the party, including some of the men, chose the punch, and I ended up quickly whipping up a second pitcher. Good thing the recipe is easy to remember, and I’d pre-made extra ice-tea, so mixing up more quickly was easy.

Another surprise this drink beheld for Nick was that he liked it himself. He didn’t expect to, since he’s not a fan of sweet drinks, but since the main mixer in this is ice-tea, that you make yourself (and therefore sweeten as lightly as you want), it is just sweet enough to taste nice, but not overly so. And since it’s mostly tea, you get the healthy antioxidants that go with it, so you can tell yourself you’re having something that’s good for you.

The recipe, as written, makes about 8 servings. It takes homemade ice-tea, fruit juice of your choice, rum and a fruity liqueur.

For the batch pictured I used Five Alive Tropical Citrus juice and Limoncello, but it’s equally delicious made with any tropical fruit juice, such as pineapple. As for the liqueur, Alize Gold Passion (it’s the golden coloured version of Alize) is also good. Experiment and find your favourite combination … really, this recipe is more about the quantity of each ingredient, rather than the specific brand/flavour of those ingredients.

Update Summer 2019 : We discovered a new favourite combo!

Ice tea : made with 2 tea bags Raspberry Tea (Celestial Seasonings makes some) and 2 tea bags Lemon Ginger (Tetley makes some). 6 cups boiling water, plus 1 cup boiling water combined with 2 1/2 tbsp sugar.  Makes more tea than you need for the recipe but it’s good to drink as is, or used to water down drinks.

Juice : Tropical Passion, Oasis Brand Canada

Alcohol : dark rum

Liqueur : Caribbean Pineapple, made by Giffard France

This is simple to mix up on the fly, once you’ve memorize the straightforward ratio of ingredients, each one being half the amount of the one before : 4 cups ice-tea, 2 cups tropical juice juice, 1 cup rum, 1/2 cup liqueur (or less, depending on how much alcohol you wish to include). Note the ratio, which declines by half with each ingredient — 4 to 2 to 1 to 1/2.

I hope you try it.

Thanks for dropping over.
xo lou

[Follow-up Summer 2019 : This continues to be a go-to cocktail at our place. Our friends really like it, as do we.]