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Take a break from Donald’s complete inability to heal you with this Kingdom Hearts inspired beverage made of rum, red wine, sambuca, lime juice and bitters.

You’ll need

1.5 oz (45ml) rum anejo

.50 oz (15ml) red wine reduction

.50 oz (15ml) sambuca

.75 oz (20ml) lime juice

Dash Angostura bitters

Add all ingredients to a shaker filled with ice. Shake briefly to chill. Strain into your vessel. Garnish with a cherry. Serve!

“The Heartless have great fear of the Keyblade. That’s why they’ll keep coming after you no matter what.” Leon

Kingdom Hearts is a weird series—just try describing it to someone who has never encountered it before.

“So you play as this kid, Sora, who is a kind of chosen one, who goes around fighting darkness and rescuing his friends. But there’s also loads of characters from other games and movies, like Sephiroth and Cloud and Donald Duck…”

“Wait. Did you say Donald Duck?”

“Yeah, he’s one of the main characters you collect along the way, along with Goofy. Donald’s a magic-user, but he doesn’t heal as much as—“

“Donald. Fucking. Duck. And Goofy. In the same universe as Cloud Strife?”

“I swear it’s not as weird as it sounds.”

And that’s just describing the characters. Talking about the story is even harder, what with the sheer number of characters and locations and plotlines. I mean, just look at this storyline chart.

The Heartless are, thankfully, relatively simple to explain: the spooky dark shadow things that you have to fight all the time. It’s a good thing too, as they’re almost as iconic as the Keyblade itself for Kingdom Hearts as a series—you wouldn’t get very far without being able to talk about them.

But, considering this is Kingdom Hearts we’re talking about, even the most simple of Heartless still has a great depth of lore to them.

That’s why I decided to base a drink around the Heartless—a drink that was pure black and simple on the surface, but dig deep enough into them, and you’ll realise there’s a lot more than meets the eye.

Like the deep and dark wine and rum combo? Try the Spartan Kick from Assassin’s Creed too!

This drink is as dark and broody as the Heartless themselves, arriving with a kick of licorice, a dash of red fruit and tannins and a splatter of savoury—though it’s balanced out with a bite of lime and the inherent sweetness of the rum, sambuca and red wine reduction.

All up, it’s a multi-layered drink with a level of complexity you might not expect from a pure black beverage.

If you want to keep seeing video-game-inspired cocktails and get a hold of some exclusive recipes, head on over to Experience Bar’s Patreon page and consider slinging me a credit or two. You help keep this blog going!

