Hark! The holiday spirit is in danger and we need your help! The season’s signature scents and sips are almost ribboned for release, but our stash of some all-important ingredients got totally Scrooged! For next month’s box, it’s up to you to turn the dial on a series of aged rum cocktails to SPICED. 

The star spirit hailing from the islands has long proven to be perfect for wintertime gatherings, despite its beachy beginnings. But then some of the category’s most dependable distillers went and tossed in some spices (often indigenous to rum-producing regions), and the sensations started to get really high for the holidays. As you may know, this world of pre-flavored spirits can sometimes be tricky to navigate with full confidence that your bottle isn’t a lab-made attempt at replicating X or Y confection. For every cotton-candy vodka out there, though, there’s also someone deploying the perfect combo of actual spices to send already solid rums into the stratosphere. 

With all that in mind, the holiday-magic mission of our upcoming box is something decidedly different—the rum-spicer supreme is YOU! Not only have our three bartenders come up with superior season-peaking cocktails to make all things merry and bright, but they’ve also pinpointed and collected just the right spices and seasonings to infuse into the rum before they go on to boost their respective blends.

A flavor workshop of your very own awaits! Just skate your way into the Rum on Ice and Everything Nice Box for a chance to get your hands (and taste buds!) nice and spiced for the holidays!

Things are getting nuts over at Shaker & Spoon these days—coconuts, that is! Riddle us this: whoever said that the time for bright and crushable daiquiris is lapsed when summer wraps? Not Greg Mayer, whose cocktail sifts through the stresses of the season to land on a poignant reminder: hey, the holidays can be fun, too! The Co, Co, Co! takes a triple dip into tropical fruit, with an infusion of toasted coconut black tea that harmonizes just fine and funkily with the molasses notes of rum, and a syrup surrounded on all sides by both toasted and untoasted coconut. A wave of lime here and dashes of creole bitters there completes the cocktail and transports all holiday partygoers to a faraway land of quenching quaffability!   

Greg began his career in the hospitality industry working in kitchens as a line cook and transitioned to roles behind the bars of many hot spots nationwide. Over the past few years, Greg represented the iconic Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey in NYC. Now he’s back in creation mode, working on cocktails for the Shaker & Spoon community! 

Quick! Somebody left Sother Teague out in the cold! Grab a blanket, start the fire, and mix together his latest signature mind, body, and soul warmer, the Hot ButterNut Rum. What makes this heated blend such a dashing defroster? Well, it all begins with a classic spice mix, featuring some familiar names like nutmeg and allspice that hail from the very same islands as rum itself. This newly stoked spirit needs to stick to your ribs somehow, and we’ve got a batter for that—a luscious mix of softened butter and salted butternut squash syrup! Add some walnut bitters, grate some nutmeg, and—just like that—the great thaw takes place and a smile appears on the face of Sother the (former) Snowman.

Sother is the beverage director at New York’s Amor y Amargo and host of The Speakeasy on Heritage Radio Network. In 2018, he was honored with Wine Enthusiast’s Mixologist of the Year Award, and he has authored two books, I’m Just Here for the Drinks and Let’s Get Blitzen, and created Driftwood Bitters and Garden Party Bitters. Catch up on all the Sother favorites in the S&S catalog, including The Weekender, Ash and Elm, Dragon Tears, and Fruitcake Weather.

Get close enough to a pheasant and prepare to hear its mighty cry—a sort of squeaky hiccup, if we’re being honest (something we cocktail lovers might know a little something about!). But even an underwhelming utterance doesn’t put a damper on all of the bird’s beautifully-colored and barrel-chested majesty. Caer Maiko’s Pheasant’s Call is a matcha made in heaven for lovers of wintertime old fashioneds. First comes an infusion of classic cinnamon hand in hand with ginger and licorice root—a pleasantly unexpected head start for the rum—before the earthy, bittersweet flavors of chocolate mole bitters and matcha enter the fray. There’s also a bonus build to turn this tipple into a milk punch, with both versions capable of memorable and valiant vocals, indeed!

Having returned to her SoCal roots, Caer can now be found managing the iconic Los Angeles gastropub Father’s Office. Sheand is also the co-creator of Daijoubu Pop Up: Super Asian Cocktails, a traveling cocktail experience that pushes culinary boundaries in cocktails by incorporating surprising, unusual, and authentic Asian flavors while creating a space for Asian people in front of and behind the bar. She was also a top-4 finalist (!!!) for US Bartender of the Year at the 2023 Tales of the Cocktail Foundation’s Spirited Awards and has been a veteran S&S alum with many great cocktails to her credit, including the peppy and pink Miami Sound Machine and the holiday hit Wagtails sing.

Ding Dong! Bells will be ringing, popcorn stringing, and all the best spiced flavors singing in the cocktails of the Rum on Ice and Everything Nice Box.

🥥🍵🌰,
The Shaker & Spoon Team

*not vegan: Bitter Girl Go Walnuts Bitters contain honey.
*potential allergens: Bitter Girl Go Walnuts Bitters contain walnuts. Double coconut syrup contains coconut. Nutmeg seed was originally processed in a facility that contains peanuts, tree nuts, soy, milk, wheat, and sesame seeds, with all products processed and packed based under Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs) and HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points). Most items in Sother’s classic rum spice mix were originally processed on equipment shared with peanuts, tree nuts, wheat, milk, soy, eggs, and sesame.