Infusing vodka is easy - almost anything blends well with the colourless, odourless liquor. But infusing other spirits is much more challenging and takes a measure of trial and error.
At the spacious, ambient Blue Bar in the swanky Four Seasons Hotel, food and beverage assistant director Terrence Tsang says staff decided infused vodkas were passe, so they experimented with other liquors.
Gin did not work well, so they tried rum, using sugar cane, honeydew melon and other fruits and spices. The infusion that worked best was pineapple and lemongrass.
The flesh of a whole pineapple is chopped into pieces and eight to 10 sticks of the Southeast Asian herb are left to infuse in rum that has been decanted from the bottle into a larger container.
'We use light rum because dark rum has too much sugar cane and doesn't go so well with pineapple,' says Tsang, who moved to the new hotel from the Four Seasons in New York.
Although the rum can simply be drunk on the rocks, a special cocktail, the Delicantini, was created for it. It also features fresh ginger and honey, creating an exotic drink that suits Asian tastes. The result is sweet but not sickly, and fragrant, with the cooling sensation of lemongrass.
