This was a lovely cocktail that I made for my wife, a lover of rum. It was a pretty good way to use up some less than stellar champagne that was left over from New Year's.
10 mint leaves, muddled (plus more for garnish)
¾ oz fresh lime juice
1 oz simple syrup
2 oz aged rum
2 dashes Angostura bitters
2 oz champagne
Directions
Muddle mint in shaker with lime juice.
Add the simple syrup, aged rum, and bitters and shake with ice.
Strain into glass. I used a Hawthorne strainer as well as a sieve to minimize the mint bits in the drink.
I wish I took pictures of the other cocktails that I made this weekend. We had six people over and we all did some sort of Cocktail science and wrote down the recipes that we liked. I will eventually workshop them into actual drinks that can appeal to more than just the one person that made it.
One of their favorite drinks was a bourbon milk punch that used my chai spiced simple syrup. Everyone was calling it "just milk" because a milk punch looks like you have put ice in a glass of milk and nothing else. The taste is spectacular though.