Barrelled over by rum

EARLIER this month, the award-winning restaurant Zuma Bangkok on Rajdamri Road and its partner, Ron Zacapa rum, introduced the world’s first evolving cocktail system, the Zuma Zacapa Live Solera.
A custom-designed cocktail installation, the Zuma Zacapa Live Solera, has been officially installed and is currently available in Bangkok and eight other Zuma restaurants across the world – delivering an original cocktail in each restaurant that’a designed to appeal to local palates and to perfectly complement Zuma’s contemporary Japanese cuisine.
The Solera system features four American oak barrels connected to each other. The first three casks are individually flavoured allowing the Ron Zacapa rum to trickle through the barrel system, giving the drink a unique and really special taste. Zuma Bangkok’s exclusive flavours are Ginger & Lemongrass Liqueur, Chocolate & Chilli, and Bitters Pomelo Zest Tea. Once the rum has travelled through the Solera system, it is presented in a chilled glass with a hand-cut piece of ice and engraved with a bespoke ice stamper.
Pornseak Pharksuwan, Diageo Reserve Channel director is delighted with the Solera.
“We are excited by this new innovation that is designed to appeal to local palates and to perfectly complement Zuma’s contemporary Japanese cuisine. It took two years to come up with this innovative way of cocktail making and it is exclusive, found only at Zuma restaurants in London, New York, Miami, Abu Dhabi, Istanbul, Hong Kong and Bangkok,” he enthused.
Arkadiusz Rybak, Zuma’s Bar Development Manager, added: “At Zuma, we are always exploring new ways to interact with our guests, and the ‘Zuma Zacapa Live Solera’ enables them to engage with the bartender – not just from a visual or emotional point of view, but to be part of the process. It’s an amazing project and we are very excited about sharing it with our customers.”
Solera is an ancient process for ageing liquids such as wine, beer, vinegar, and brandy, by fractional blending in such a way that the finished product is a mixture of ages, with the average age gradually increasing as the process continues over many years. The purpose of this labour-intensive process is the maintenance of a reliable style and quality of the beverage over time. Solera means literally “on the ground” in Spanish, and it refers to the lower level of the set of barrels or other containers used in the process. Products that are often solera aged include sherry, madeira, lillet, port wine, balsamic, commandaria, sherry vinegars, as well as beer, rum and whiskies.
Produced in Guatemala, Ron Zacapa rum is the result of a unique combination of soil, climate and natural materials brought together with skilled distillation and a special high altitude ageing process. Unlike most rums which use molasses, Zacapa is produced using the first pressing of sugar cane juice, referred to as “virgin sugar cane honey”. Aged in the “House Above the Clouds” at an altitude of 2,300 metres, Zacapa rum also uses a solrera-aging process, with the rum being laid to rest in selected barrels that previously held aged American whiskeys, sherries and Pedro Ximenez wines. In the case of the XO, the final stage of ageing occurs in French oak cognac barrels.

 Zuma Bangkok is at the St Regis hotel on Rajdamri Road. It is open from Sunday to Thursday from noon until midnight and on Friday and Saturday from noon to 1am
For more information and |reservation, call (02) 252 4707 orvisit Facebook.com/ZumaBangkok.