One of Manchester's favourite cocktails bars, The Liars Club, has been holding a monthly society dedicated to educating and intoxicating all centered around the finest spirit known to man... rum. We went along to investigate.
We arrived early to get some good seats as we heard things can get pretty busy, and ordered a couple of drinks to get the evening started in the form of a Zombie and a Fog Cutter. The Zombie is a DMN favourite; six different types of rum mixed with tropical juices and then set on fire just for good measure. The Fog Cutter is the strongest cocktail that Liars offers and has more Bacardi and gin that you'd ever need in a drink, but goes down dangerously well.
For those unfamiliar with Rum Society, the format is quite simple. You come in, grab yourself a delightful cocktail, take a seat and wait for things to kick off. In this case, it was when our host for the evening Francis Weier of Distillnation, poured out some of the Botran Reserva into glasses, handed them around the room and ran us through the processes and history of the rum.
Tiki cocktails at The Liars Club
The Liars Club is giving its menu a shake-up soon, and we were lucky enough to have one of the bartenders, Brodie, take us through a couple of the new options. My personal favourite was the Dutty Wine; a brilliantly Caribbean mix of Wray & Nephews rum, Red Label Wine, lemon juice and curacao.
Francis was very informative about the Botran range, but you can experience Rum Society any day that The Liars Club is open thanks to the extensive knowledge of all their skilled bartenders. For example, I now know that in certain Tiki Bars then don't use labels on the rums, they colour code, to stop anyone stealing their concoctions. I also know that the reason behind the "Ray's Mistake" cocktail is because a fella called Ray at Tiki Ti's in Hollywood tried to make a cocktail but was drunk and picked up the wrong bottles. He still pulled it off though!
If you're into your rum, even in the slightest, I cannot recommend Rum Society enough. It has a great atmosphere, it's informative without being overbearing and above all, there's FREE RUM. Book yourself in for the next Rum Society now!
