(Kamal Ramkarran is the author of the original and longer version of this 2009 article, which has been abridged and amended by me with his permission).
The swizzle is Guyana’s long lost, but once favourite, alcoholic beverage. Even though it was synonymous with Demerara and had enjoyed worldwide fame, it is now almost unknown in the country which gave it birth. In the 1800s and up to the mid-1900s, the drinking of swizzles was an established custom, even passion, among Demerara’s upper strata. It became the preferred cocktail of the day, long before the combination of rum and coke was ever discovered.
Between 1871 and 1957 at least eight authors wrote about it, complete with lengthy descriptions, recipes and poems (one was written about the swizzle as a goddess). In fact, so many people have written about swizzles and Demerara that it is a mystery that the drink disappeared with almost no trace.
One of the most entertaining accounts of the swizzle appeared in ‘The Gentleman’s Magazine’ of the New York Times on October 8, 1893. After describing a journey to the interior to obtain a swizzle stick, and then describing the stick in detail, the author then set out the elaborate ritual of bringing the swizzle into being by the ‘Demerarian’ butler. This delightful 19th century description of how to conjure up the now fallen cocktail, too long for this article, is on my blog.
The swizzle was originally made with gin, brandy or whisky, which were later replaced by rum. Even though swizzles were the craze in British Guiana for a hundred plus years before the 1950s, I found only two people who had heard about it even though there are probably many more.
Mr Joseph King, retired Senior Partner of Cameron & Shepherd, remembers that in the mid-1950s when he was a young lawyer,