makahiki cocktail

1 oz Ponche de Santo Antão (Cape Verdean rum liqueur)
1/2 oz Aguardiente Grogue de Santo Antão (Cape Verdean rum)
1/2 oz Clarified Sugar Cane Water
1 oz Clarified Lime Juice
1/4 tsp Kona Coffee

Paint the inside of a rocks glass with pineapple paint (sediment after centrifugal clarification, thickened with a tapioca thickener). Add crushed ice, place pineapple ring in middle, add more crushed ice. Shake ingredients with ice and double strain into glass. Pack with more ice. Garnish with a candied pineapple disk (here a charred one) and a Marasca cherry soaked in house allspice dram. Insert a straw down the middle of the glass (through the pineapple ring).

Last time I spoke with Randy Wong, he told me that he had a drink that he wanted to make for me, so last night when we stopped by Clio, I had a chance to try it. The drink was the Makahiki Cocktail that garnered him the victory in the Dole Pineapple cocktail contest a few weeks ago. Makahiki is the Hawaiian version of Thanksgiving that occurs during harvest season, and Hawaiians show their gratitude toward their god of agriculture, fertility, and rain. In addition to the pineapple, Randy included sugar cane and coffee grown in Hawaii to round out the islander agricultural theme. Randy describes the Hawaiian symbolism in further detail on his blog.
The Makahiki Cocktail's aroma was primarily from the pineapple garnish. The sip was a light lime and pineapple flavor that had a pleasant sugar cane juice flavor to it; since the drink lacked pineapple juice, Randy explained that the pineapple flavor was from the pineapple paint slowly entering into solution. Next, the sip had a dark rum flavor from the rum, rum liqueur, and coffee. As I have seen elsewhere, coffee and lime make a good flavor pairing, and here it was similar; I say similar because clarified lime juice is a bit different from regular freshly squeezed juice. Randy explained that the drink could probably be made with fresh lime juice (and perhaps muddled pineapple at the bottom), but simple syrup would give a different flavor than the sugar cane water.