Show off your flair for entertaining by ditching the bland bar peanuts and biltong for more considered appetisers to accompany your rum cocktails. The idea is to make the snacks as much of a talking point as the beverage itself: it’s all about choosing canapés that pop in vibrant colour, look good plated, and paying close attention to the flavour notes of the rum to make sure your ingredients and flavours work to complement and enhance one another.

Grilled Cheese and Caramelised Onions

A toasted cheese sandwich might be a stock standard snack but adding caramalised onion (which takes about 20 minutes to make) will lift it to gourmet heights. Cut into small triangles and serve with a spicy tomato relish.

You can’t go wrong with these tasty morsels. All you need are three ingredients: bacon, good-quality cocktail sausages and honey, and simply, wrap, grill and drizzle. The more the merrier. 

Slow roast and shred a boneless pork shoulder. Slather in a barbecue sauce of your choosing and serve on soft taco shells with a red cabbage and carrot slaw and lashings of guacamole and sour cream and a squeeze of lime. Chef’s kiss!

One of Joburg’s hidden secrets is located in Parkmore, Banchan Korean Restaurant, where you can find hearty authentic Korean cuisine, such as the standout Korean-fried chicken. Get the 8- or 16-piece with your choice of two sauces: spicy-sweet, chilli mayo, soya garlic or fiery red. All the sauces work to complement a classic rum cocktail.

Served in pretty patterned bowls, dim sum – meaning “touch the heart” in Chinese – make perfect appetisers. Place your order of juicy shrimp wontons with an extra spicy Sichuan sauce dressing from Beijing Opera Pantry.

Look no further than El Burro in Cape Town for some of the chilli poppers in SA. Filled with hot gooey vegan cashew cream or mozzarella and feta mix, the jalapeños are served with their signature guacamole and are great for cutting the slightly sweet and smokey kick of a neat serving of rum on ice.

This post was sponsored by Diageo SA and produced by Adspace Studio.

The Sport Report - Weekly

Get the Sport Report every Thursday to stay up to speed with everything you need to know in the world of sport.

Contact the public editor with feedback for our journalists, complaints, queries or suggestions about articles on News24.