Pleased as Punch

This big-batch cocktail is a sip of sunshine

- ALANA AL-HATLANI, VICTOR PROTASIO

JUICY FRUIT Peak citrus season runs from late November through March.

SOUTHERNERS might associate planter’s punch, a classic rum-and-citrus drink, with Charleston, South Carolina, and the historic Planters Hotel, but there’s little evidence to prove that’s where it actually originated. In fact, a separate famous Planter’s Hotel in St. Louis also claimed credit for this cocktail. The 2024 book When Southern Women Cook has yet another theory: It may have first been created by a Caribbean planter’s wife for enslaved laborers who were working in the heat.