A Dark Rum Tea Toddy

Another star in the Hot Toddy expanded universe.

In last week’s newsletter, we looked at a simple, delicious Hot Toddy built on rye whiskey and maple syrup, and showed how that no-frills Old Fashioned-esque drink could be extrapolated into a General Theory of the Hot Toddy — an all-purpose structure for making and modifying Hot Toddys in various forms. 

That rye-maple Toddy is an incredibly easy cocktail to make — you only need whiskey, maple syrup, bitters, a slice of orange, and hot water. It’s the sort of thing you can put together with little effort on a chilly Tuesday night using ingredients you probably already have in the house. Stuck inside during a snowstorm without having stocked up at the grocery store beforehand? That’s the Toddy for you. 

This week, I want to show you how to take that same underlying formula and make a somewhat more complex drink by swapping out all the ingredients — and making a couple of tiny adjustments to get the balance just right. 

This version of the Toddy is built on high-proof, ultra funky rum, sweet vermouth, Black Walnut bitters, a bit of syrup, and herbal black tea. It’s not particularly difficult to make, but it does call for some specific ingredients that — while not exotic — might require a little bit of advance planning to get together. 

If you can obtain the ingredients, it’s worth it: the combination is alluringly complex, making use of the way that heat brings out the aromatics in alcoholic ingredients while incorporating a smoky, herbal black tea into the mix that reads somewhere between a smoky scotch, an amaro, and Green Chartreuse. It shows just how far the Hot Toddy format can go. 

Big Head Toddy and the Monsters

Let’s go back to the Toddy template we looked at in last week’s newsletter.