Hurricane Cocktail

The Hurricane cocktail is a sweet, boozy, New Orleans classic made with two kinds of rum, passionfruit puree, orange and lime juices, simple syrup, and grenadine.

New Orleans is often referred to as the birthplace of the American cocktail. Although the area’s serious elder statesman libation, the Sazerac, gets most of the attention from the craft cocktail world, it’s the Hurricane you want to party with. This bash in a glass is one of the most popular drinks in New Orleans’ French Quarter, known for its vibrant nightlife.

This tropical tall drink was created in the early 1940s at the historic New Orleans bar Pat O’Brien’s. During World War II, domestic whiskey was hard to come by but rum, which had a direct route from the Caribbean, up the Mississippi River to the Big Easy, was abundant. This created an opportunity for the bar to establish a signature, locally-inspired cocktail, and to get a surplus of rum, a less popular spirit at the time, off their hands.

The drink was served in a glass shaped like a hurricane lamp and the name became synonymous with the cocktail. The Hurricane glass, with its hourglass shape and 20-ounce capacity, is ideal for drinks that use a lot of ice and have extensive ingredient lists, like many other similar tropical drinks. 

What makes the Hurricane work

There’s not a lot of nuance to this rum-filled flavor bomb, and as the name suggests, it packs quite the punch. 

This tropical classic is famous for having passionfruit in the mix — a unique flavor profile that is at once tart and sweet, floral and tropical. This can be made with passionfruit syrup instead of juice or puree, but be sure to omit the simple syrup and adjust the specs to taste. 

The mix of white and dark rums creates complexity and a boozy backbone that can stand up to the medley of juices and syrups involved. But batten down the hatches, because this drink has a whopping 4 ounces of rum.