QotD: Shaken not stirred

What's your favorite drink or cocktail? What's in it?
Question submitted by charm.vox.com

My favourite drink, beyond yer standard pint of Smithwick's with a Guinness head (holy God that's the good beer). I have several. They range from the gothy to the girly, but all make me happy and drunk (ultimately).

Honourable mention goes to the whiskey sour, with its sour mash and sweet bartender's sugar. I would praise it more highly, but somewhere in the dark depths of 1996 I spent a night drinking whiskey sours and the early morning hours puking my guts out. I don't know what I did at that party, I can't quite remember who I talked to or what exactly I said, but I wasn't invited to the next party.

Third place goes to the undeniably girly Havana Cocktail. What's in it? Light rum, pineapple juice, and sumpin' else. I don't know why I opted to order one in the first place. And by the time I'd had my fifth straight, I didn't care.

Second place is my hard liquor alternative to the Smithwicks-and-Guiness, the tall gin-and-ginger. After a time I got a little tired of the standard gin and tonic, having realized that I was in very little danger of malaria here in Canada, so I banked on the sweet un-quinined alternative of ginger ale with my gin. Damn, was it fine. It feels like a put-on to drink it in winter, but it goes well with unforgiving heat and sweat on a cold glass.

Foist place goes to one of the first mixed drinks I ever tasted, probably as a child at some relative's wedding. The Bermudian Dark and Stormy is a mix of Gosling's Black Seal rum (the dark) and Barritt's Ginger Beer (the stormy). Everything that is good about the Bermudian side of my family is in this drink. I warn you, though: trying to reproduce the Dark and Stormy with non-Bermudian ingredients will result in a ho-hum mush of pop and booze, the kind of standard-issue mixed drink you can get at the bar at any old 35th wedding anniversary. I once made the mistake of ordering a Dark and Stomy at the Islamorada Fish Company in the Florida Keys. The bartender poured some Jones Soda ginger beer into a shot of Bacardi. And nobody fired him right away for screwing up a simple so very very badly. I think part of the reason I enjoy the drink so much is because of its rarity, its near-impossibility to get anywhere outside of Bermuda. The Goslings is possible where I live, but Barritt's ginger beer - forget it.

Also of note is the Rum Swizzle, another Bermudian concoction that my mother brings home every so often. It's black rum with fruit juices. We got whomped on it one afternoon in 1992.