While cleaning isn’t one of my favorite pastimes, the occasionally bright upside is finding odd, forgotten things. Like when I was going through a cabinet at my mother’s and found a set of four Molokai Mule mugs. Naturally I took this as a sign to make drinks. You know, like finding a five dollars on the ground right outside a bar. Or rain, the universal indicator that you need a hot toddy.

Besides the gentle nudge from the mugs, I had other motives for wanting to make Molokai Mules. I’m fortunate to be able to visit Hawaii every two years or so, and most of my time is spent on the island of Molokaʻi, where we stay with a branch of our extended family. The island is very small—not what you would call a hot tourist destination—and has a population of about 7,500 inhabiting its 260 square miles. Family has lived on the island for many, many, many years, being tied as they are to R.W. Meyer, the man who ran the Molokaʻi sugar mill, one of the first industries on the island.

However interesting the old mill is, however, it pales in comparison with the thing the island is best known for, the leper colony at Kalaupapa. The peninsula of Kalaupapa is completely isolated from the rest of the island, reachable only by sea or, these days, by helicopter. On the landward side, the only way to reach the outpost is to traverse a trail down the 3,315-foot cliffs facing the peninsula—the tallest sea cliffs in the world. You can do this on foot or saddle up a mule and travel 1,600 feet down the 26 switchbacks to the bottom.

The original settlement on the peninsula, at Kalawao, was begun by Father Damien, one of the most popular figures in Molokaʻi’s history. Father Damien built churches in other parts of the island but he is best known for his efforts in support of the 1,200 men, women and children who were forcibly exiled to Kalaupapa beginning in the 1860s (he is scheduled for canonization in 2009). Often dropped by boat hundreds of yards out in the rough sea, near a large rock visible from shore, sufferers of Hansen’s Disease (aka leprosy) were forced to swim for their lives. If they made it, they lived the rest of their lives in mandated isolation with other patients. Until the introduction of sulphur drugs in the late ’30s which stopped the progression of symptoms, any children born in Kalaupapa were removed from their parents and sent to live outside the colony. Even after treatment became available, patients remained at Kalaupapa because of the quarantine order set down by Kamehameha V fifty years before.

In 1969 the quarantine was lifted and Kalaupapa became just like any other part of Hawaii, until public outcry put a stop to plans for development and preserved Kalaupapa as a state park. Patients were allowed to remain in residence and today there are still patients and their descendants who live on the peninsula. The only way to visit the colony is via an official tour, as the residents understandably value their privacy. Such tours are primarily conducted via mule and you can purchase “Molokaʻi Mule” souvenirs all over the island. Aside from the mule tours of Kalaupapa, you can also take a mule-drawn cart tour at Coffees of Hawai’i, the working coffee plantation on Molokaʻi. Mules also powered the mill at the R.W. Meyer Sugar Mill, making mules a very important part of the day-to-day life and history of the island.

I have no idea if any of this actually had to do with the name of the drink but that’s my hypothesis, anyway. According to the Bum’s Taboo Table, this drink originated at the Kon Tiki Restaurant in the Waikiki Sheraton on Oahu sometime in the ’70s. I can vouch for this, since the mugs have the Sheraton logo on the back. The recipe below serves six, but we cut ours in half and still wound up with a full pitcher.

12 oz orange juice
6 oz lime juice
6 oz orgeat syrup
6 oz brandy
6 oz light rum
6 oz Lemon Hart demerara
½ tsp Angostura bitters

Mix all ingredients in a pitcher full of ice cubes. Pour into double old-fashioned glasses or Molokai Mule mugs and garnish with pineapple, a mint sprig and an orchid.

As you might have noticed, the Mule is a strong drink. Very strong, actually. We only made half a batch and I was quite happy when we finished it off—I can see how after a few too many of these you might start to think you’re a mule. The orgeat seemed pretty heavy until I tasted it; the syrup adds just the right amount of sweetness and unifies the flavors of the brandy and demerara. The orange and lime juice add just enough tiki flavor without overwhelming the liquor, especially when combined with the hint of spice in the bitters. A definite keeper.