Berlin, with its fleeting summers and relentless winters, may seem an unlikely birthplace for a bright, tropical drink. Yet the Ranglum, a rum cocktail in which falernum’s spice and lime’s tartness are in perfect harmony, has been edging closer to classic status ever since it was first served at Berlin’s Victoria Bar in 2006.
The Ranglum emerged at a transitional moment in modern cocktail history. Although the lounge revival of the mid-’90s had sparked a superficial enthusiasm for anything served in a Martini glass, much of the deep knowledge from the interwar and postwar years lay dormant in out-of-print books, in danger of being forgotten entirely.
In the early 2000s, Gonçalo de Sousa Monteiro, an architecture student who had drifted into the world of gastronomy, was mixing at the Victoria Bar, writing for the German magazine Mixology and contributing to the cocktail renaissance that was happening in nascent online forums. When Velvet Falernum was reintroduced to the market in 2006, he was asked to write about it, but soon came up against a lack of reliable recipes. Falernum, which once was an essential component of the Corn ’n’ Oil, the Rum Swizzle and the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club Cocktail, had lapsed into almost-complete obscurity.
So de Sousa Monteiro started to improvise: He added lime to offset the sweetness of the falernum, and quickly abandoned amber rums in favor of darker Jamaican varieties to give the mixture the edge it needed. The final flourish was a small hit of Wray & Nephew Overproof Rum, which helped convey the flavors and aromas of the cocktail more convincingly. As he puts it, “It’s like the heat at the core of the earth, the fire inside.” The result was essentially a dark rum sour elevated to new heights of complexity.
While developing his rum, lime and falernum concoction, de Sousa Monteiro had been listening to Below the Bassline, a 1996 album by Jamaican guitarist Ernest Ranglin that pairs liquid jazz lines with rhythms rooted in reggae and rocksteady; it was a fitting analogue to the cocktail, which floated the delicate spice of falernum over the earthy foundation of Jamaican rum. The combination of Ranglin and falernum eventually gave the drink its distinctive name.
Word of mouth helped the Ranglum to find its way onto other bar menus in Berlin, but its widespread adoption may also have been due to its relative simplicity. It is not a drink that relies on advanced techniques, obscure ingredients or exotic garnishes; anyone with access to a shaker and some decent liquor can attempt it. But the simplest cocktails have the smallest margin for error, and the great challenge with the Ranglum is striking the elusive balance between sweet, sour, spice and spirit.
Even de Sousa Monteiro—who has since left Victoria Bar and opened the Berlin cocktail bar Buck and Breck in 2010—doesn’t seem entirely finished with that mission. While his basic formula remains unchanged, the version he now serves is made with a falernum that he accents with a few dashes of orgeat and extra allspice and ginger.
In its original form, the Ranglum has become an established part of the German cocktail scene: It can still be found on the menu at Victoria Bar—where it appears as the “Ranglum 2006,” a nod to its classic status—and most serious bars will be able to make one on demand, even if some will insist on adding a dash of Demerara syrup as a concession to those who prefer their rum drinks on the sweet side.
The Ranglum has even been making inroads in other parts of Europe, and while it remains a relative rarity in the States, it is perhaps only a matter of time before a new generation of bartenders embrace its challenges. Despite its complexities of flavor, it is a drink that thrives on the combination of a few simple ingredients. As de Sousa Monteiro summarizes: “You just need them in perfect balance.”