Cannes-Cannes

This cocktail has a fun name, a pun on Cannes, France and the famous bawdy cabaret dance of Paris. I liked that it was a balanced and strong cocktail (the two seldom go hand in hand) with a double punch of rum and gin. Because the recipe specified light rum, meaning that there should be little barrel taste in the drink, I opted for Plantation's 3-Stars blend, though that is a pretty flavorful light rum. Then I was struggling with which gin to use for the second measure.

Old Tom sounded appropriate, but it would have been lost in all that grapefruit. So would a simple London dry style gin (although this is perfectly acceptable if that is what you have on hand.) Doing the smell test on several bottles, I arrived at my homemade dry gin. This steeped gin had the right piney and tannin notes to stand out past all of that juice. The combination was lovely and made this the best cocktail I had that day.

• 1 1/2 oz. light rum (Plantation 3-Star used)
  1 1'/2 oz. dry gin (homemade bathtub gin used)
• 3 oz. grapefruit juice
• 1/2 oz. Cointreau (triple sec used)
• orange slice

Combine all ingredients except orange slice in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a double Old Fashioned glass full of fresh ice and garnish with orange slice.