Larchmont – Recipe from David Embury’s ‘The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks’

As a grand finale to cocktails based on the Rum Sour, I give you one of my favourites which I have named after my favourite community: 

½ part Sugar Syrup 

2 parts Lime Juice 

2 parts Grand Marnier 

6 parts White Cuban Rum 

Shake vigorously with crushed or cracked ice and strain into chilled and frosted cocktail glasses. A twist of orange peel may be dropped into each drink for decoration if desired. 

After I had invented the Larchmont I discovered that Colonel G. Selmer Fougner had devised a somewhat similar cocktail consisting of 1 part Grand Marnier, 2 parts rum, and just a dash of lime juice which, in honour of his wife, he had named the LITTLE ONE.

Larchmont is a short 30km hop out from midtown NYC, and has been used as a bolt hole for the rich and powerful ever since the automobile made getting there dramatically less tedious. Today its still a tiny town, twice the size of Cooperstown (03-04-2018), with less history, but a lot more presence. It frequently resides in the 10 wealthiest places in the United States, and always in the top quarter of the 100 best places to live, and unfortunately, like so much land in the US, was first traded for a ‘minimal amount of goods and trinkets’ with an Algonquin tribe.

The drink itself is a little strange for Embury, its definitely on the sweet side, which considering its one of his own creations is a bit of a surprise, and I’m not giving him points on creativity, it being a simple rum based New Orleans style sour. However, with a couple of light tweaks, mostly dropping the Grand Marnier down a part, it makes a lovely orange daiquiri, one of those rarely seen but always well received combinations.