Planter's Punch
ClassicOne of sour, two of sweet — the old island rule.
Fruity, tropical, and easygoing. Dark rum lays down molasses, brown sugar, and a touch of funk; lime brings the sour snap while orange and grenadine sweeten and color it ruby; a dash of Angostura keeps it from turning cloying. Long, cold, and thoroughly refreshing over crushed ice.
Ingredients
- 2 oz Dark Rum
- 0.75 oz Fresh Lime Juice
- 0.5 oz Fresh Orange Juice
- 0.5 oz Grenadine
- 0.25 oz Simple Syrup
- 1 dash Angostura Bitters
- Orange slice · optional garnish
- Maraschino cherry · optional garnish
Method
- 1
Add the rum, lime juice, orange juice, grenadine, simple syrup, and bitters to a shaker with ice.
- 2
Shake until well-chilled.
- 3
Pour unstrained into a tall glass and top with fresh crushed ice.
- 4
Garnish with an orange slice and a maraschino cherry.
The Story
Planter's Punch is one of the oldest rum drinks in the Caribbean canon, its roots in the plantation punches of Jamaica and long associated with the Planters' Punch House and, later, Myers's Rum. Its enduring appeal is a recipe you can recite: "one of sour, two of sweet, three of strong, four of weak" — lime, sugar, rum, and water or ice, in easy proportion. That simple rhyme made it a template rather than a fixed formula, endlessly adaptable and impossible to forget, and it carried the taste of the islands into bars around the world.
Recipe card
The whole recipe in one shareable image.
