Don’s Mix
Donn Beach’s prep-batched grapefruit-and-cinnamon syrup, two parts fresh grapefruit juice to one part cinnamon syrup. Required for the canonical 1934 Zombie. Make it fresh.
Don’s Mix is one of the numbered house batches Donn Beach used to keep his recipes secret from his own bartenders. The bartenders at Don the Beachcomber prepped the various mixes—Mix 1, Mix 4, Don’s Mix, and others—without knowing what was in any of them. The bartender would assemble a Zombie or a Pearl Diver by combining numbered mixes in numbered proportions; the full formula existed only in Donn’s head and a locked book.
When Jeff Berry reconstructed the Donn Beach catalog in the 1990s and 2000s, decoding the mixes was central to the work. Don’s Mix turned out to be two parts fresh grapefruit juice to one part cinnamon syrup. It’s the defining ingredient of the canonical 1934 Zombie. Without it, you have the 1950s Zombie Punch—a different drink that took over exotic-cocktail menus when Don’s Mix became too hard to source.