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" Published in the November 2013 issue We&amp;#039;re well into the dark-spirit months, the time of year when G&amp;amp;amp;T&amp;#039;s and daiquiris and Trinidad gin swizzles yield to manhattans, sidecars, and old-fashioneds; when rum, gin, and tequila traditionally step aside in favor of whiskey, brandy, and more whiskey. Okay, the margarita is pretty much a year-round drink these days, and if G&amp;amp;amp;T&amp;#039;s fade there&amp;#039;s always the martini, which knows no season. So really, it&amp;#039;s only rum that gets lost in the seasonal shuffle. It doesn&amp;#039;t have to. Rum is a shape-shifter: Whatever type of booze you prefer, there&amp;#039;s likely to be a sugarcane-based analog, something with the same weight, texture, and intensity of flavor. That&amp;#039;s not to say they&amp;#039;re exactly the same (although some white rums are pretty damned difficult to tell apart from vodka), but when it comes to mixing drinks they behave the same. Substitute the right rum for your whiskey (or whatever) and you&amp;#039;ll end up with something that has the same weight on your tongue, the same level of sweetness and pungency \u2014 but tastes just different enough to relieve the monotony that sets in when you order the same drink all the time.  The best way to see what rums can do in a cocktail is to pick two or three well-known classics and give them a spin. (Since it&amp;#039;s whiskey and brandy season, we stuck to the darker, longer-aged rums here.) We started with the manhattan \u2014 easy, solid, and deeply satisfying. There are, however, two main factions of manhattan drinkers: the bourbonites and the ryeists. If you&amp;#039;re one of the former, you like a richer, softer manhattan; if the latter, it&amp;#039;s leaner, spicier for you. The spicier rum is easy: Rhum agricole, from Martinique and a few other French islands, is funky, dry, and lean when young; when old, its funk slides into a woody tang. A good example, such as the [1]La Favorite Rhum Vieux Coeur de Rhum ($58 for one liter), makes a manhattan that&amp;#039;s dark, spicy, and even drier than one made with rye; you might just like the substitute better than the original. For bourbon, we like to switch in a well-aged Jamaican pot-still rum. The most archaic of rum styles off the still, with a good eight or 12 years in oak, it turns chewy, but has enough funk left to keep it interesting. Go with [2]Plantation vintage 2000 Jamaican rum ($40).  Then there&amp;#039;s the sidecar, the quintessential French cocktail, with cognac, Cointreau, and lemon juice. Smooth, refreshing, and elegant, this calls for a mellower, subtler rum than the manhattan. For generations, the rums of the Spanish Caribbean modeled themselves on cognac, so it&amp;#039;s a no-brainer to turn there. [3]The Santa Teresa 1796 ($35), an especially smooth and rich example from Venezuela, has subtle hints of vanilla and brown sugar that you won&amp;#039;t get from cognac. Finally, the old-fashioned. Here, you could use almost any dark rum and get a fine drink out of the formula. But it can also take on some of the more unusual rums. El Dorado, from Guyana, stands at the foot of a long tradition of making strong, dry, and funky-tasting rums. While the [4] El Dorado 5 ($18) is a bit pungent on its own for easy sipping, when beaten together with sugar, bitters, and ice it yields a drink that should appeal to rye and bourbon drinkers alike. And everyone else. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/drinks/a25384/rum-for-winter-1113/>