The Will Of Alan is Difford's Guide's own name for what it calls a "fantastic, spiced, tiki-style twisted Daiquiri," credited to a 2008 discovery at Tonic, a cocktail bar on North Castle Street in Edinburgh. Tonic is a real, still-operating bar independently confirmed by multiple travel and hospitality sites, but no bartender is named in Difford's own record, and no source beyond Difford's Guide documents this specific drink, its inventor, or the fuller story behind it. Treat the bar and the year as the extent of what's verifiable; everything else here describes the recipe as documented, not a reconstructed history.
Fantastic, spiced, tiki-style twisted Daiquiri.
A Daiquiri, Rerouted Through a Spice Cabinet
Strip the Will Of Alan down and the architecture is a classic Daiquiri: aged rum, citrus, and a sweetener, shaken hard over ice. What's different is what fills the sweetener slot and what rides along with it. Falernum — a Caribbean rum-based cordial built on lime, ginger, clove, and almond — stands in for simple syrup, pulling the drink toward spice instead of straight sugar. A couple of dashes of old-fashioned bitters add a whiskey-bar edge that a plain Daiquiri never touches, and a small measure of egg white gives it a foam cap a Daiquiri traditionally does without.
Bar Tonic in Edinburgh is a genuine, well-reviewed cocktail bar, and it's entirely plausible this drink came out of there in 2008 as Difford's Guide states. What isn't independently verifiable is who made it or the circumstances — Difford's own entry doesn't name a bartender, and no outside cocktail archive, book, or bar history turned up a corroborating account.
The Spec
Aged Caribbean rum carries the weight, pineapple and lime juice supply the acid and fruit, and falernum plus a couple of dashes of bitters do the spicing that separates this from a straight Daiquiri.
Falernum Instead of Simple Syrup
Falernum's ginger-clove-almond profile is what makes this read as "spiced" rather than just sweet — it's the same move tiki drinks like the Corn 'n Oil or Doctor Funk make, borrowing the Caribbean spice-liqueur tradition instead of leaning on plain sugar.
A Whiskey-Bar Dash in a Rum Drink
Old-fashioned aromatic bitters aren't a tiki-bar staple the way Angostura is in a Zombie or a Mai Tai — a couple of dashes here nudge the drink toward the darker, spirit-forward register of a whiskey cocktail without changing its rum backbone.
Bottom Line
Whatever the full story behind its 2008 debut, the Will Of Alan earns its "twisted Daiquiri" label honestly — familiar rum-and-citrus bones dressed in falernum spice and a dash of bitters most Daiquiris never see.