The Soul Serene – Cihuatán Sahumerio
Usually I mix Tiki drinks in February during Tiki Month. However, if you have a special rum to review it just comes natural to create a Tiki style cocktail. Especially, when a cinnamon eau de vie also stands around. Let us find out, how the El Salvadorian rum pairs with cinnamon, pears and mango for a one rum and two eau de vies cocktail!
The Chiuatán Sahumerio was part of the Perola Rum Week 2020 where they introduced a new rum each day. The rum from El Salvador is produced by Licorera Cihuatán and is the only premium rum from this small South American country. The rum basically is produced from farm to bottle at the distillery. The Sahumerio is a blend of twelve to 14-year-old rum aged in ex-bourbon casks. Sahumerio is the Mayan name of a small bowl in which delicacies are burned. The Cihuatán Sahumerio contains 19,8 g sugar per litre.
Fruity molasses
The Sahumerio starts off as a typical molasses based rum. There are sugarcane and molasses notes with even some smoke and burned sugarcane. However, after a while a certain sweet candy note develops. On top of that, you can find exotic fruits in the taste. The rum is noticeable sweet and in my opinion it could have used less sugar. Nevertheless, it will be quite versatile in cocktails.
Exotic fruits and cinnamon
Of course, you might just make due with adding a pinch of cinnamon to a cocktail. Yet, when you have a cinnamon eau de vie from the highly praised Sammerhof distillery on hand, you can instead use that. Apart from that, I had a mango nectar from Hitchcock’s new premium series on hand. I am always for pressing fresh juices, but in some cases it is just too much work. The Hitchcock Mango is actually quite good with spicy mango notes and not too much sweetness. While there are a lot of Tiki drinks out there which use more than one rum, I thought that this time I would use more than one eau de vie…
1,5 cl Faude Williams
0,75 cl Sammerhof Cinnamon Eau de Vie
3 cl Lime Juice
6 cl Mango Nectar
3 cl Honey Mix
Garnish: Dried Pineapple Half;
Song: Villagers – The Soul Serene;
When sipping “the Soul Serene” you first notice the rum and mango combination. However, the drink is not as sweet as you might imagine. The cinnamon lingers on in the back, but gets more pronounced the longer you sip the cocktail. Apart from that, the pear notes rather support the other flavours than taking the stage. The drink is going down rather easy and the flavours work together very well.
*The fact that I received a product reviewed in this article for free, did not – in any way – influence the rating of said product. The rum was provided by Perola and the mango nectar by Hitchcock.
