The Carmelina is a wonderfully unusual cocktail that blends light rum (specifically, Bacardi Carta Blanca) with cloudy nigori sake and coconut liqueur. It’s a refreshing Daiquiri riff, with a gentle sweetness and satisfying texture. It’s beautiful, too – the unfiltered rice in the sake gives the drink a glowing luminescence, like a glass of liquid moonlight.
The Carmelina was created for the Bacardi Legacy Competition by New Zealand bartender Ollie Mason, who named it for a Cuban town to which Japanese sugar-cane workers emigrated in the early 1900s.
