A tropical sour with a bitter backbone smuggled in: dark rum and pineapple lay down a lush, fruity base, and a sharp lash of Campari cuts straight through it with bittersweet orange-peel edge. Lime keeps it bright while demerara syrup rounds the corners and pulls the whole thing into balance, so it drinks rich yet dry over ice, with a fresh pineapple wedge lending aroma on the way in.
Garnish: Pineapple Wedge
Shaken · Rocks · On the Rocks
add
Add the dark rum, Campari, pineapple juice, lime juice, and demerara syrup to a shaker with ice.
shake
Shake hard until well chilled.
strain
Strain into a rocks glass filled with fresh ice.
garnish
Garnish with a pineapple wedge.
The drink first appeared on 6 July 1973 at the Kuala Lumpur Hilton's Aviary Bar, and the credit belongs to that hotel bar rather than to any one person, though some accounts name its beverage manager, Jeffrey Ong. Decades on, Giuseppe González reworked it at Painkiller in New York in 2010, reaching for blackstrap rum and dialing back the sweetness. His version is the one bartenders now regard as canonical, and the IBA made the Jungle Bird one of its official cocktails in 2024.