Grassy, funky white rhum agricole stays front and center in this spirit-forward minimalist, only lightly tamed by a touch of cane syrup and brightened by the oils of a squeezed lime coin. Built and served neat, it drinks like a Daiquiri stripped to its bones — no shaking, no dilution, just raw cane spirit with a whisper of sweetness and a flash of citrus peel.
Built · Old Fashioned · Neat
build
Add the cane syrup to an Old Fashioned glass, then pour in the rhum agricole blanc.
express
Cut a lime coin (more rind than flesh) from the side of the fruit, squeeze it over the glass to release oils and a little juice, then drop it in.
stir
Stir or swizzle gently until the syrup is dissolved and the lime oils are integrated. Serve neat, in the traditional manner; add a large cube of ice if a chilled version is preferred.
garnish
Leave the spent lime coin in the glass as the garnish.
No inventor's name survives for the Ti' Punch — the "little punch" took shape as a folk drink of the French Caribbean, and Martinique and Guadeloupe both now count it as their national cocktail. Its earliest written trace appears in Lafcadio Hearn's 1890 travel writing on Martinique, though Hearn chronicled the drink rather than created it. Custom leaves each drinker to assemble a glass to taste, a habit islanders capture in a wry proverb holding that everyone mixes their own death. The neat serve goes back to a time before ice was easy to find on the islands, and today it is poured both with and without ice.