Welcome To Wonkette Happy Hour, With This Week's Cocktail, The La Perla!

A sweet tropical Negroni for the heat of summer.

Proud of that garnish. The drink’s a bit more orange in person.

Greetings, Wonketeers! I’m Hooper, your bartender. The 4th of July was stupid busy at the bar, and it hasn’t slowed down much since then. I decided to play around a little on my day off and make some infusions inspired by an Instagram cocktail from Holy City Handcraft. The end result is bittersweet, complex, and a ton of fun. Let’s make a La Perla. Here’s the recipe.

La Perla

1 ½ oz House Coconut Rum

1 ½ oz Banana Aperol

1 ½ oz Taylor’s Dry Sherry

5 dashes black walnut bitters

Stir all ingredients together in a cocktail vessel with ice until the outside of the container is cold. Strain into a rocks glass over a large ice cube. Garnish with an orange twist and a bruleed banana slice.

House Coconut Rum

1 750ml bottle Planteray 3 Star Unaged Rum

¼ cup coconut oil

Microwave the coconut oil until it is completely liquid and clear, 30-40 seconds. Pour off ¼ cup of the rum from the bottle and reserve for later use. Add the coconut oil to the rum bottle and shake vigorously. Store in the freezer overnight. The next day, strain the solids from the bottle and pour into a sealable bottle. Keeps indefinitely in the fridge.

Banana Aperol

2 cups Aperol

1 ripe organic banana

Peel the banana and place it in a blender with the Aperol. Puree until most of the solids are liquefied. Pour the mixture into a container and store it in the refrigerator overnight. The next day, strain out the solids and pour into a sealable bottle. Keeps indefinitely in the fridge.

A standard Negroni is equal parts Campari, gin, and sweet vermouth. This recipe is inspired by the Negroni, but uses none of the original ingredients. The original Negroni is named after Count Negroni, an inspired Italian drinker who swapped gin for soda water in a cocktail at his favorite watering hole. In the same vein, I went looking for a Caribbean noble I could name this drink after. I stumbled upon Miguel Enriquez, Captain of Sea and War, a wildly successful Spanish privateer of African descent who commanded a fleet larger than Blackbeard’s. His flagship was the La Perla, which strikes me as a lovely name for a cocktail.

Do not use a commercially made coconut rum for this drink. Commercial coconut rum is thick with sugar. Malibu “rum” has so much sugar in it that it doesn’t even qualify as rum anymore; the alcohol content is too low. Aperol is already quite sweet on its own. Adding a sugar-laden coconut bomb to the glass will create undrinkable syrup. If you buy a tasty unaged rum like Planteray 3-Star and wash it with coconut oil, you won’t regret it. As I am writing this, I’m sipping on a glass of homemade coconut rum on the rocks with a lime wedge. It’s probably not the lime in the coconut that Harry Nilsson had in mind, but it’s curing what ails me after a very long work week. Seriously, even if you don’t make the rest of this recipe, make this rum. You won’t regret it.

I decided to use Aperol instead of Campari in this recipe based solely on the season. Campari is herbal, bittersweet, and addictive. But Aperol has orange notes that scream of summer. Pairing orange, coconut, and banana together in a stirred cocktail was too appealing not to pursue. Aperol spritzes are still popular at the country club bar. Enhancing the Aperol with fresh banana proved to be an utter treat, enhancing the sweetness and flavor while maintaining a crisp bitter undertone.

Let’s talk ingredients:

I thought I’d photograph the infusions before they had time to sit instead of photographing the final product. That Aperol looks scary, but the results are worth it.

House Coconut Rum: This is the same fat-washing technique that I’ve used to make olive Tito’s for dirty martinis in the past. The only tricky bit is that coconut oil tends to stay solid at room temperature. A quick trip through the microwave solves the problem nicely. Use a rum that you’d want to drink without coconut for best results. Good ingredients make better cocktails.

Banana Infused Aperol: The banana does add a lot of sweetness to the cocktail; I might cut the Aperol down by ½ oz and add more coconut rum, but that’s to suit my own palate. Taste, experiment, make it your own.

Taylor’s Dry Sherry: I know there are better sherrys out there, but they’re hard to find out in suburban Midwest Ohio. By all means, use something nicer if you have it. I think a dry sherry instead of a cream sherry is in order; there’s already enough sweetness in this drink.

Black Walnut Bitters: Nut and banana meld wonderfully. A quick hit of bitter walnut to balance the cocktail is a great idea. Be generous with the bitters; too much is always better than too little.

We aren’t linking to Amazon anymore, because fuck that coward Bezos with a rusty bar spoon. Go read The Negroni: Drinking to La Dolce Vita, with Recipes & Lore instead. This cocktail isn’t a Negroni, but many cocktails, including this one, have been inspired by the classic three-part recipe. You would do well to read this and get inspired for your own variations on the classic.

You can find me on Bluesky at @samuraigrog!

OPEN THREAD! DRINK!