The idea of flash blending is to perfectly chill, dilute and aerate your co*cktail - releasing the aromatics, loosening up the alcohol and creating just the right mouthfeel - all without making a slushy. When you pour it in your glass, you should still be able to see crushed ice in with the liquid.
What's the best choice of rums to use in your Zombie?
Each rum used brings a particular quality to the mix - the dry, medium body of the Puerto Rican acts as a base on which to build the thick, funky Jamaican, with the Demerara bringing layers of charred woodiness and burnt caramel - all marrying perfectly in a blended dance of rum, syrups and spices.
- The original recipe called for Lowndes, a long-extinct Jamaican rum. Hamilton Jamaican Pot Still Black Rum works well in its place, bringing you a taste of hogo-heaven on earth. Or if you want to take the funk down a notch, try the Appleton 12yr Gold.
- Lemon Hart 151 is recommended for the Demerara, but as it’s unlikely to be available, Hamilton 151 is an excellent substitute.
- For the Puerto Rican, try the smooth, slightly smoky Bacardi 8, or the Ron del Barrilito 3 Star. As alternatives, dry, slightly nutty rums such as Cana Brava 7yr from Panama, or Flor de Cana 7yr from Nicaraguawould also work.
If you’re new to rum and looking to understand the differences between them, take a look at our Beginners Guide to Rums for more information.
We're about to dig in pretty deep into the origin of this infamous drink, so if you want to jump to either the Mid-Century Zombie recipe or the Simplified Zombie, please do - but make sure you bookmark this page for later reading! 😊
Origin of the 1934 Zombie Punch
Tiki lore has it that Donn created the first Zombie in 1936 in his Hollywood ‘Beachcomber’ bar, in order to help revive a hungover customer so that he could make it through a business meeting... literally raising him from the dead? Or sending him to his undying doom… ☠️🍹⚡️
For many years Donn readily encouraged this colorful story, but in 1941 he turned his back on it, stating in his Beachcomber menu: “The Zombie didn’t just happen. It is the result of a long and expensive process of evolution: In the experiments leading up to the Zombie, three and a half cases of assorted rums were used and found their way down the drain so that you may now enjoy this potent ‘mender of broken dreams”.
Why replace such a good origin story with something so scientific? Don the Beachcomber, master storyteller, creator of worlds, reneging on an engaging tale in order to bring it back down to the numbers?...
Either way, the Zombie took off like a revenant rum rocket and sat there on its tiki throne for a good 10 years or so before that tricksy Trader Vic Mai Tai came and usurped its ungodly position amidst the undying stars.
With great renown comes much imitation
Nationwide acclaim for the Zombie drove bars across America, tiki or otherwise, to produce their own versions of this lethal libation. And with these overly alcoholic copies came the false claims to its undead lineage.
Nightclub manager Monte Proser (later of the mob-tied ‘Copacabana’) served ‘Monte Proser’s Zombie’ at the 1939 New York World Fair, audaciously even going so far as to open his own Beachcomber restaurants on the Eastern Seaboard!
Whilst in 1940 there came a claim that has niggled many across the decades. Patrick Gavin Duffy, traditional east-coast pre-Prohibition co*cktail expert, printed his own recipe for the Zombie in 1934, in his book ‘The Official Mixer's Manual’. How could this be? Don’s Hollywood 'hole in the wall' had only started serving them that very same year...
Although Proser’s claim was easily refutable and frankly, sheer balls deep fabrication, it’s taken some time to get to the bottom of The Patrick Duffy Recipe Mystery. Thanks to the co*cktail Scooby Doo skills of Limbo Lizard at Tiki Central, we find that this wrongly assumed designation was nothing more than a ghost in the machine, a phantom created by a 1940 reprint, where the recipe was retrospectively inserted into a handy space between sections. A recipe that bears no resemblance to the co*cktail we know and love (fear? love... fear a little).
Excerpt from 'The Official Mixer's Manual', by Patrick Gavin Duffy
So perhaps Donn’s numbers driven origin story wasn’t a lapse in his famed marketing skills, rather, it was a considered response to the competition that challenged the very heart of his rum reputation.
Let’s leave the last word on the subject to his frenemy and rival, ‘Trader Vic’ Bergeron, “There has been much argument about the origination of the Zombie, but credit should be given where credit is due. Don the Beachcomber, of Hollywood, Chicago, and anywhere in the South Pacific, is the originator of this famous drink. Only he can give you the original recipe..." - Trader Vic's Book of Food & Drink, 1949.
A fall from grace
Sadly, the very key to the Zombie’s preternatural success - Donn’s business and marketing savvy - would eventually pave the way to its slow motion decline into syrup laden mediocrity.
His penchant for encrypting his ingredients to stave off competitive espionage meant that no-one ever really knew what the hell went into his drinks. So with each new claimant and with each new copy, the Zombie devolved further and further away from its true essence, its fidelity deteriorating over the decades like a bad photocopy.
And over time the secrecy and paranoia surrounding its proprietary recipe also began to turn the 'Press' against Donn, or at least, against this particular drink. With no writer able to replicate it regardless of the pressure from their publishers, it was eventually dismissed as a vulgar publicity stunt.
And so, through the drinking dark ages of the 70’s - 90’s many of tiki’s recipes were lost to time… or so we thought…
Cracking the code
Inspired by his success in tracking down the original recipe for Donn’s Navy Grog, Jeff ‘Beachbum’ Berry stumbled into the role of co*cktail archaeologist and modern day champion of tiki. A Hawaiian shirt wearing co*cktail drinking Indiana Jones, his mixological explorations led him onto the trail of the unholy grail of tiki drinks (I was trying for a ‘Last Crusade’ gag but couldn’t quite clinch it)... the original Zombie.
With a number of its ingredients encoded, unknown and lost to the ravages of bad taste, it took many years and many unmentionable imposters before he truly found his way through the veils of secrecy surrounding it.
After a promising lead, though still possibly a red herring (see the 1950 ‘Spievak’ Zombie recipe below) Jeff uncovered a version that was reported by ‘Cabaret’ magazine in ‘56 as the one Don served at his Beachcomber restaurant in Waikiki. Happy with its provenance, Jeff left off his search, only to be thrown back into the investigatory fray a few years later...
In 2005 Jennifer Santiago, daughter of Dick Santiago (a former barman who worked at the Beachcomber in 1937), presented Jeff with an almost incontrovertible piece of evidence - an old notebook that Dick had carried in his pocket for the 15 years he worked there.
Jeff could almost taste the original Zombie, its secrets nearly within his grasp, but it still took him over a year to break the encryption surrounding the last two ingredients, ‘Don’s Mix’ and 'Spices #2'.
So what were those final tantalizing puzzle pieces, those arcane ingredients of deception and veiled renown? What divine nectars were about to be re-visited upon us mere mortals?
Grapefruit juice and cinnamon syrup. Damn.
Ok, after all that, they could’ve been a bit more… well... exotic. But don’t let their unassuming demeanour fool you. When mixed together they produce flavors greater than the sum of their parts - the baking spice of the cinnamon and the earthy sweetness of the grapefruit combine to make a taste that's almost like that of fresh baked apple pie. What they bring to the Zombie is a sub-structure that supports the other ingredients in a way that is totally irreplaceable. Trust me. Treat yourself to a Zombie today. Or... err... maybe wait till the weekend 🤤🍹🥧
