“It’s one of those things that can be a total garbage drink,” says Evan Major, bar manager at Gage & Tollner and Sunken Harbor Club in Brooklyn. “If you order a Jungle Bird, it’s a gamble.” The pitfalls of the 1978 tropical classic aren’t that different from those of other recipes—if one ingredient is wrong, the whole drink can be out of balance. But when two of those ingredients are as powerful and bitter as Jamaican (or blackstrap) rum and Campari, it becomes much harder to find that balance.

“I didn’t like Jungle Birds for a long time because I got Campari bombs,” recalls Kitty Bernardo, bar manager at Paradise Lost in Manhattan, citing one of the most common reasons why the drink fails. Bernardo, one of the Punch’s Best New Bartenders of 2024was together with Major, rum expert Austin Hartman and the Punch editorial team at the Sunken Harbor Club for a recent Blind tasting of 10 Jungle Bird recipes submitted by bartenders from across the country. Drinks were prepared by Tom Wolfson of Gage & Tollner to each bartender’s specifications.

Unlike last time, we were looking for the ultimate jungle bird (in 2019)When Campari was considered a non-negotiable ingredient, the recipes submitted this time included a number of alternatives, which Expansion of the red bitters market in the USA—though Campari still had the most entries. And where the original recipe calls for dark Jamaican rum, half of the entries relied on blackstrap rum, a popular substitute in bartending circles “Jungle Bird” by Giuseppe Gonzáleza version that has become canon since its debut in 2010. (González’s version also reduces the pineapple portion from four ounces to an ounce and a half, a stylistic choice that has also been widely adopted.)

According to Hartman, “Blackstrap is a bold choice – it doesn’t often blend with other rums.” At the same time, however, the judges were looking for the distinct molasses flavor that Blackstrap has in abundance. “The molasses blends well with the bitterness,” Major said.

Fittingly, Blackstrap Rum was included in two of our three favorites. First place went to the Jungle Bird by Rockwell Place. The Brooklyn bar splits the rum portion of the drink between an ounce of Appleton Estate 12 Year Old Rare Casks Rum and a half ounce of Cruzan Blackstrap Rum; the bar team also splits the red bitters between Campari and Aperol. To complete the drink, they use the obligatory lime and pineapple juice, as well as two teaspoons of rich Demerara syrup and finally five drops of saline solution. Like all of our top picks, it was served on a large rock rather than crushed ice; the latter resulted in drinks that diluted too quickly and lacked the visually appealing head of shaken pineapple juice. Judges praised the drink’s texture and body, as well as the balance of the cocktail’s three central pillars: rum, red bitters and pineapple. As Punch editor-in-chief Talia Baiocchi noted, it was the most “archetypal” of them all.

Second place went to the Jungle Bird by Will Pasternak of Blacktail, currently running as a pop-up at New York’s Backbar at Hotel Eventi. Blackstrap plays a major role in this version, with three-quarters of an ounce, complemented by a half ounce each of Appleton 8-year-old rum and Smith & Cross Jamaican rum. Otherwise, the drink is identical to González’s version, with the addition of a dash of Angostura bitters and white sugar instead of sugar syrup. Judges found it a natural evolution of González’s blackstrap-accented take and a drink that gets better with time, starting in a way Baiocchi described as “challenging, but in a way I like,” and eventually winning over even his initial skeptics. “I was a hater,” said Punch editor Mary Anne Porto, who noted that it had a medicinal quality at first, “but I’m converted.” Hartman added, “There’s so much, you can relax and drink that for an hour.”

Third place went to New York’s aptly named Jungle Bird. The bar’s house recipe foregoes Blackstrap entirely in favor of a blend of Don Q pineapple rum and Smith & Cross. Add Campari, Giffard pineapple liqueur, and the expected lime and pineapple juice. Juicy and refreshing without a pronounced rum punch, the drink was described by Major as “a great Jungle Bird to start with” and by Hartman as “the friendly Jungle Bird.” Although they agreed earlier in the tasting that the Jungle Bird is not a drink most people would order more than one of due to its aperitivo-like bitterness, all of the judges made an exception for this one.