#99 Cocktail: Dark and Stormy

   It's the Bermuda national drink. And it's made exclusively with Gosling's Black rum.  In the US, the name "Dark 'N Stormy" and the corresponding recipe is a trademark of Gosling Brothers Ltd, the producer of Black Seal Rum and Stormy Ginger Beer in Bermuda.
      Sailors and rum go hand in hand. In the 1800s it was standard practice for the British Royal Navy to allocate rum rations to sailors, and the rum sourced from their various bases on Caribbean rum-producing islands such as Bermuda.
      In the later 1860s the Gosling Brothers rum distillery in Bermuda began marketing its “old rum” – a heavy blend of dark rums which eventually became the Gosling’s Black Seal marketed today.
      Originating in England, ginger beer was brought to the Caribbean via the English colonists. William John Barritt came to Bermuda from England and in 1874 opened a dry goods shop on the corner of Front & King Streets in Hamilton, with a small mineral water bottling machine in the back room. This is where the Bermuda’s now-famous Barritt’s Ginger Beer first started (and is still going, five generations later).
       It’s likely that the mix of rum & ginger beer was made with Gosling’s dark rum as it was the popular locally available rum. Goslings has since trademarked the name Dark ‘n’ Stormy to keep some degree of official ownership over the cocktail.
         As for the name itself, it is said to have originated when a sailor, holding up the dark-cloud-in-a-glass beverage, observed that the drink was the “colour of a cloud only a fool or a dead man would sail under”.

http://www.rumahoy.com/

3 ounces ginger beer

2 ounces Gosling's Black Rum