Jungle Negroni

For his tropical twist on the Negroni, Montana’s Trail House beverage director Austin Hartman looked to the tiki mainstay, the Jungle Bird, for inspiration, and swapped out herbaceous gin for sweet, round rum. He doesn’t use just any old rum in his concoction, though. Hartman uses a signature rum blend, which is becoming more and more of a trend in the cocktail world. His personal mix is made up of a 2-to-1-to-1 ratio of Plantation Pineapple rum, Plantation Original Overproof and Hamilton’s Jamaican Pot Still Gold rum. “The blend gives you sweetness dominantly from the pineapple rum, which allows slight notes of the overproof to come through for added kick, while the Jamaican rum lends a favorable funkiness,” he says. Velvet falernum adds lime, ginger and vanilla notes, as well as that subtly sweet complexity intrinsic to all good exotic libations. Campari and sweet vermouth trace the drink back to its Negroni roots. “It still holds that classic look, but the aromatics of it are amazing and unique,” Hartman says.