Falernum
A clove, ginger, almond, and lime spice mixture from Barbados that has existed in some form since at least the 1700s and got its modern name in print in 1892. Without it, the Corn 'n' Oil, the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club, and a third of the tiki canon do not work.
What it is
Falernum is two related products under the same name. The liqueur version, of which John D. Taylor's Velvet Falernum from Barbados is the standard, is an 11 percent ABV bottling built on a rum or neutral-spirit base, sweetened, and flavored with clove, ginger, lime zest, and almond. The syrup version is the same flavor profile without alcohol, made by infusing those spices into a sugar syrup. The Velvet Falernum bottle splits the difference, low enough proof to be used in volume but enough alcohol to act as a preservative.
The flavor is unmistakable once you know it. Clove leads, then lime and ginger come in around it, with almond underneath as a soft body. It is sweet but not cloying. A half ounce in a tiki drink is a lot. Quarter-ounce doses are common.
Where it shows up
The defining drink in the Barbadian tradition is the Corn 'n' Oil, which is one of the simplest mixed drinks ever recorded: blackstrap rum, falernum, lime, Angostura, over ice. The proportions vary by household. The drink is named for the way the dark rum and the falernum layer in the glass before stirring, with the rum looking like crude oil sitting on top.
In tiki, falernum is everywhere. Don the Beachcomber and Trader Vic both used it, often in their own custom blends. The Royal Bermuda Yacht Club, the Three Dots and a Dash, the Saturn, and any number of Don's recipes from the 1930s and 1940s lean on falernum for the spice frame. Outside tiki, it shows up in nineteenth-century West Indian punches that traveled with British ships into the rest of the cocktail world.
One under-appreciated cocktail: the Saturn, by J. "Popo" Galsini, won the 1967 IBA World Cocktail Championship. Gin, lemon, falernum, passion fruit, orgeat. It is a falernum cocktail rather than a rum cocktail, and it shows that the spice syrup's range is broader than tiki implies. Galsini was a working bartender in California, and the drink was effectively forgotten for forty years before Beachbum Berry rediscovered it in his research and put it back into circulation around 2008.
The historical arc
The name falernum was supposedly chosen in eighteenth-century Barbados as a joking reference to Falernian, the Roman wine praised by Pliny and Horace. Calling a Caribbean spice mixture by the name of an ancient noble vintage was a Bajan deadpan. Whether the joke is genuinely from the 1700s is not provable, but the name is in print by 1892, in a Trinidad shipping list. By 1893 falernum was being exported regularly from Barbados to Britain.
John D. Taylor's distillery, which is where Velvet Falernum has been made since the early twentieth century, sits in St. Michael, Barbados. Taylor's is now owned by R.L. Seale, the same company behind Foursquare rum. Velvet Falernum is one of those bottles that has been continuously available since well before Prohibition without the kind of forty-year gap that hit Crème de Violette or Old Tom. The cocktail revival did not bring it back. The cocktail revival rediscovered it.
What did happen in the 2000s is that American cocktail bars and tiki bars stopped pretending falernum was an obscure ingredient. PUNCH, Imbibe, and a handful of West Indian cookbook writers documented the recipe and the variations. Bartenders started making house falernum. By 2015 it was on most cocktail menus and in most retail stores.
House falernum, briefly
Most of the well-known house falernum recipes start with the same outline. Steep whole cloves and lime zest in white rum for 24 hours. Add fresh ginger and toasted almonds for another 24 hours. Strain. Combine with a 2:1 simple syrup. The result is brighter and more aggressive than commercial Velvet Falernum but works particularly well in tiki where the falernum is one note among many. Beachbum Berry's Sippin' Safari includes a credible version. Paul Clarke at Imbibe has published another. The recipes are similar enough that the differences are mostly cooking philosophy, not chemistry.
Modern brands
- John D. Taylor's Velvet Falernum (Barbados, 11%). The standard. Almond and clove forward, balanced lime, real Barbadian. The bottle most recipes are calling for. About fifteen dollars a bottle.
- BG Reynolds Falernum (Oregon, syrup). Non-alcoholic, made by tiki specialist Blair Reynolds. Slightly more aggressive on the spice. Useful when you want falernum flavor without adding alcohol to a stirred drink.
- The Bitter Truth Golden Falernum (Germany, 18%). Drier and more concentrated than Taylor's. Imported by Haus Alpenz.
- Avua Falernum (Brazil, 18%). Made on a cachaça base, with a fresher lime profile. Less common in the US but worth looking for.
Modern substitutions
Falernum is hard to fake because the spice combination is specific. The closest household substitution is a syrup made from one part simple syrup, infused with cloves, lime zest, fresh ginger, and a small amount of almond extract or orgeat, then strained. It gets you the flavor but not the body. If you have orgeat and a clove tincture, equal parts of those plus lime juice approximates falernum in a tiki drink.
Allspice dram is sometimes confused with falernum, but it is its own ingredient with no clove, no lime, and no almond. They are not interchangeable. A drink calling for both, like Three Dots and a Dash, needs both.
Where to buy
Velvet Falernum is on the shelf at most US liquor stores that have a tiki section. Online: Total Wine, Drizly, Caskers. BG Reynolds sells direct from their website. The Bitter Truth is more specialty, available from K&L Wines and some Haus Alpenz accounts.
At a glance
| Category | Caribbean spice liqueur or syrup |
|---|---|
| Origin | Barbados, name in print by 1892 |
| ABV | 0% (syrup) to 35% (rare versions) |
| Standard bottle | John D. Taylor's Velvet Falernum, 11% |
| Continuously made since | Early 1900s |
| Signature drinks | Corn 'n' Oil, Royal Bermuda Yacht Club |
Cocktails to try
- Corn 'n' Oil · blackstrap rum, falernum, lime, Angostura. The Barbadian standard.
- Royal Bermuda Yacht Club · aged rum, lime, falernum, orange curaçao. Trader Vic, 1947.
- Three Dots and a Dash · rum, lime, orange, honey, falernum, allspice dram, Angostura. Don the Beachcomber.
Falernum is the rare lost ingredient that was never lost, just ignored by anyone north of the Caribbean for sixty years.
The Lost Cocktail Codex includes the West Indian punches that brought falernum into the broader cocktail world before tiki existed. Drop your email below.