Original Zombie

The Zombie was invented in 1934 by Donn Beach (born Ernest Raymond Gantt), the founding father of tiki culture, at his Hollywood restaurant Don the Beachcomber. Legend says he created it to help a hung-over customer get through a business meeting — the man returned days later complaining he’d been ‘turned into a zombie.’ So potent was the drink that Don the Beachcomber restaurants limited customers to two per visit. Beach guarded the recipe obsessively, using coded bottle labels and encrypted instructions. It took cocktail historian Jeff ‘Beach Bum’ Berry decades of detective work to decode the original recipe, finally publishing it in his 2007 book Sippin’ Safari. The result: three rums, lime, falernum, Angostura bitters, Pernod, grenadine, and Don’s secret mix of cinnamon syrup and grapefruit juice.