For some reason I can’t quite put my finger on, William Prestwood’s Quarantine Order recipe is garnering a lot of attention from tiki & tropical cocktail enthusiasts lately. (Note: when I wrote this in 2019, the COVID-19 epidemic had just started.)

William generously allowed us to use his recipe in our book, Minimalist Tiki. It’s one of a hundred or so original modern tike recipes in the book from bars including Prestwood’s Pagan Idol, Lost Lake, Tonga Hut, Devil’s Reef, Zombie Village, and many more.

With so many bartenders–both pro and home bar warriors–suddenly with more time on their hands and a hankering to make cocktails at home, we’re sharing his recipe and associated notes.

In terms of its ingredients–Angostura, lime, grapefruit, cinnamon, passion fruit, and Jamaican rum–the Quarantine Order is straight-ahead classic tiki that could have come from tiki’s golden era. Every ingredient falls within the Minimalist Tiki core ingredient set, which nearly every tiki enthusiast likely has at hand. Offering a huge serving of accessible recipes without crazy ingredients was one our core tenets; the Quarantine Order exemplifies that ethos perfectly.

It’s worth highlighting the grapefruit juice and cinnamon syrup combo: Those two ingredients work wonderfully together and appear in any number of vintage tiki classics, such as the Jet Pilot, Donga Punch, and 1934 Zombie. In fact, when mixed together as 2:1 grapefruit juice/cinnamon syrup, they’re known as Don’s Mix, after tiki godfather Donn Beach

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William generously shared some backstory on how he developed the Quarantine Order:

I came up with this at The Tonga Room (around 2014) while learning about tropical bar history through self-guided study.

Around the time I was learning about Don’s mix (cinnamon and grapefruit), I happened to be drinking Angostura Bitters from a wine glass at home. I must’ve left a small bit in the glass because the next day I found a fine powder left over after the alcohol had evaporated. It tasted like dry cinnamon (a favorite flavor of mine).

I personally love bitter flavors, so I’m naturally a fan of grapefruit. I combined the Don’s mix with a healthy dose of Angostura bitters, some lime, a little passion fruit (also bitter), and a few of my favorite rums.

The name came from some old S.S. Tonga verbiage (from the 1945 Tonga Room menu) about having room for only so many roisterers, and the size of the brig. I figured we could quarantine the rest of the rabble rousers in the bowels of the ship on the grounds that their madness might be contagious. Our clientele was raucous at times!

Rum Bar Gold and Appleton Signature is a wonderful blend I came up with at Pagan Idol. We call it Jamaica Tropical (JamTrop), and it works very well in several cocktails. Originally this was Appleton V/X and El Dorado 5, which was another magic blend for me at Tonga Room. 

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If you like the Quarantine Order, check out the two other Pagan Idol recipes on page 248 of Minimalist Tiki. And if Pagan Idol is your jam, another three recipes in the book are courtesy of Jeanie Grant, another key player in Pagan Idol’s story.  And if you don’t yet have your copy of the book, head over to WonkPress.com and we’ll send one your way!

Finally, since we’re all about sharing these days, post your pictures of the Quarantine Order on Instagram and tag @cocktailwonk, @minimalisttiki, and @maximum_aloha.

Cheers!

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Quarantine Order

Pagan Idol, William Prestwood

• 5 dashes Angostura bitters
• 1 oz lime juice
• 1 oz grapefruit juice
• 0.5 oz cinnamon syrup
• 0.5 oz passion fruit syrup
• 1.5 oz aged Jamaican rum (Rum-Bar Gold)
• 1.5 oz aged Jamaican rum (Appleton Signature)

Build ingredients in shaker or blending tin.
Flash blend or shake well with crushed ice.
Pour into a snifter glass. Fill to top with fresh crushed ice.
Garnish with a bouquet of mint, a lime wheel, and a speared cherry on a bamboo skewer.

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