Gold rum, fresh lime and honey shake into a soft, rounded sour — something like a Daiquiri with honey standing in for sugar — and a float of chilled champagne lifts the whole thing into bright, fizzing effervescence. It drinks lighter than its proof suggests, the honey taking the edge off the lime while the bubbles carry the aged rum's warmth across the palate.
Garnish: Lime Wheel
shaken · Coupe · Up
add
Combine the aged rum, lime juice, and honey syrup in a shaker with ice.
shake
Shake hard until well chilled.
strain
Double-strain into a chilled coupe.
top
Top with chilled champagne and stir gently to combine.
garnish
Optionally garnish with a lime wheel.
No one is on record as inventing the Air Mail; its earliest known appearance is in a Bacardí brochure promoting Cuban rum around 1930. Its first proper printing came in 1941, when W.C. Whitfield included it in "Here's How" with the promise that it "ought to make you fly high." By 1949 the drink had also earned a mention in the Esquire Handbook for Hosts.