Cocktail Hour: The Mai Tai

Cross posted at Cincinnati Cocktails.

Hi, my name is Craig Hochscheid, I run the Cincinnati Cocktails website and I’m guest posting for Julie today. I’m crazy about Tiki cocktails, those exotic libations brimming with rum, fruit juices and spices that instantly transport the drinker to a tropical paradise with each and every sip. Tiki cocktails, and the larger cultural movement that they inspired, were big parts of Americana from the late 1930’s through the middle 1970’s.

Tiki cocktails, or Exotic Rum Drinks as they are also known, are amongst the highest pinnacle of mixology. When well made with quality ingredients, these drinks are complex and sophisticated with layers of nuanced flavors. Unfortunately, very few mixologists really know how to make Tiki cocktails. The recipes are complex and often require esoteric ingredients, and the original recipes for many of these drinks have been shrouded in mystery for decades. Fortunately, that is starting to change. Tiki is back from the edge of oblivion, and it’s hotter than it’s been in nearly four decades.

Today we are going to focus on the most famous Tiki cocktail of all time, the Mai Tai. Nearly everyone has heard of the Mai Tai, but very few people have ever actually had a real one. Most Mai Tai’s served today are overly sweet combinations of canned juices and cheap rums that are served at Chinese restaurants or at vacation resorts. These hackneyed cocktails made with poor quality ingredients nearly ruined both the Mai Tai and Tiki cocktails in general. Thankfully that’s starting to change.

The Mai Tai History

There is a long standing controversy regarding the creation of the Mai Tai. Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt, aka Don the Beachcomber, aka Donn Beach, claims to have created a drink called the Mai Tai Swizzle in 1934 (a drink that disappeared from Donn’s menu by 1937), and Victor Jules Bergeron, aka Trader Vic, claims to have created the cocktail in 1944, without any prior knowledge of Donn‘s cocktail. A bitter battle for ownership of the Mai Tai ensued over the decades, but Vic eventually won a long and heated lawsuit that finally proclaimed that he, Trader Vic, had in fact created the now famous Mai Tai. It was without question Vic’s version of the Mai Tai which rose to fame across the world, and most experts now agree that it was indeed Trader Vic who created the drink,

Trader Vic’s goal in creating the Mai Tai was to make a simple but classic cocktail that would express it’s base spirit very well. Vic explained it thusly:

“In 1944, after success with several exotic rum drinks, I felt a new drink was needed. I thought about all the really successful drinks; martinis, manhattans, daiquiris …. all basically simple drinks. I was at the service bar in my Oakland restaurant. I took down a bottle of 17-year old rum. It was J. Wray & Nephew from Jamaica; surprisingly golden in color, medium bodied, but with the rich pungent flavor particular to the Jamaican blends. The flavor of this great rum wasn’t meant to be overpowered with heavy additions of fruit juices and flavorings. I took a fresh lime, added some orange curacao from Holland, a dash of Rock Candy Syrup, and a dollop of French Orgeat, for its subtle almond flavor. A generous amount of shaved ice and vigorous shaking by hand produced the marriage I was after. Half the lime shell went in for color … I stuck in a branch of fresh mint and gave two of them to Ham and Carrie Guild, friends from Tahiti, who were there that night. Carrie took one sip and said, “Mai Tai – Roa Ae!”. In Tahitian this means “Out of This World – The Best.” Well, that was that. I named the drink “Mai Tai.”

The Mai Tai (Trader Vic’s Original Version)

• 2 ounces of 17-year old J. Wray & Nephew Rum
• 1/2 ounce Holland DeKuyper Orange Curaçao.
• 1/4 ounce Trader Vic’s Rock Candy Syrup.
• 1/2 ounce French Garnier Orgeat Syrup

The Mai Tai immediately took off to worldwide renown, and made Trader Vic a famous man. The demand for the Mai Tai quickly exhausted the supply of J. Wray & Nephew’s 17 year old rum. Vic replaced it with a 15 year old rum from J. Wray & Nephew, which he believed to maintain the quality of the 17 year old rum. Demand for the Mai Tai quickly outstripped the supply of the 15 year old rum as well. Vic started to have rums bottled under his own label hoping that he could secure a reliable supply of quality rum that would uphold the Mai Tai’s quality. And it worked, for a while at least. Over the ensuing decades however Tiki’s popularity began to wane, and the quality of ingredients used in the Mai Tai (and other Tiki cocktails) started to decline as well. By the time that the 1970’s arrived, the Mai Tai had devolved into a slurry of cheap rums, pre-bottled mixers, canned lime juice and god only knows what else. The Mai Tai, and Tiki Culture in general, soon disappeared from the American landscape.

Beachbum Berry and the Rebirth Of Tiki

By the mid-1990’s a new interest in Classic Cocktails had developed into a full blown movement. A new breed of cocktail enthusiasts began rediscovering pre-prohibition cocktail recipes and rare ingredients. Then along came Jeff “Beachbum” Berry, a self described Tikiphile and author who has devoted nearly two decades of his life to tracking down and deciphering the original Tiki cocktail recipes that Don the Beachcomber, Trader Vic and others had created decades earlier. The Bum set about trying to replicate Vic’s legendary recipe for the Mai Tai, which was no small task considering that the original ingredients had not existed for decades. The Bum was lucky to have a few precious drops of the original 17 year old Jamaican rum that Vic had used in his Mai Tai, and soon developed a new recipe for the Mai Tai using readily available modern ingredients that replicated the complex flavors of Vic’s original cocktail. As the Bum tells it in his own words:

“A proper Mai Tai has a deep amber hue, because it’s the liquor that should dominate the drink, not the sweeteners. Unfortunately, 17-year-old J. Wray & Nephew rum is a thing of the past. But by replacing it with an aged Martinique rum mixed with a premium Jamaican rum, we can approximate Vic’s original goal of “creating a drink that would be the finest drink we could make, using the finest ingredients we could find.”"

The Mai Tai (Modern Version)

• 1 oz Amber Jamaican Rum
• 1 oz Aged Rhum Agricole
• ½ oz Lime Juice
• ½ oz Orange Curaçao
• ½ oz Orgeat
• ¼ oz Simple Syrup (optional)

Add all ingredients to cocktail shaker with crushed ice. Shake and pour unstrained into a double old-fashioned glass. Add the spent lime shell to the drink, and garnish with a sprig of mint.

Notes on Ingredients

Rhum Agricole: Agricole is a specific style of rum that is made in the French territory of Martinique. Rhum Agricole is designated as an AOC by the French government, the only rum to be granted it’s own AOC anywhere in the world.. There are several brands of Rhum Agricole available at area stores (and by ’area stores‘, I mean The Cork ’n Bottle & The Party Source), including Rhum Saint James, La Favorite, Neisson & Rhum Clement. To me, Rhum St. James ‘Hors D’Age’ works exceptionally well as the Agricole component of a Mai Tai. It’s well aged, flavorful, high proof and provides the requisite flavors that a Mai Tai requires.

Jamaican Rum: Jamaica produces the heaviest and lushest rums in the Caribbean, and Appleton’s Jamaican rums are what’s called for in a Mai Tai-partially because they taste right, and partially because they are ‘spiritually correct‘, as Appleton is owned by J. Wray & Nephew, the makers of that 17 year old rum that Trader Vic first used in his Mai Tai. Appleton’s excellent value X/V rum, a blend of 5 & 10 year old rums, works exceptionally well as the Jamaican component of a Mai Tai. If you are game for a splurge, try Appleton’s Reserve or 12 Year Old Rums for a richer, more complex drink.

Orgeat: Orgeat is a sweet syrup that is made from almonds, sugar, rose water and orange-flower water and has a distinctive milky appearance & almond dominated flavour. Originally made in France, there are only a few brands of Orgeat that can be found locally, notably Torani and Fee Brothers. Torani is the better of those two brands by far. If you don’t mind mail ordering ingredients, San Francisco based Small Hand Foods makes what might be the best Orgeat to be found today. Most Orgeats are much sweeter today than they were in years past, so the use of the ¼ ounce of simple syrup in the Mai Tai recipe is optional, depending on how sweet you like your cocktails. I prefer mine on the dry side and thus omit the simple syrup entirely.

Orange Curaçao: Curaçao is an orange flavoured liqueur that is made from the peels of bitter oranges, and is much drier than Triple Sec, which should not be used in a Mai Tai. There are two styles of Curaçao on the market, those that are made with a brandy base (such as Grand Marnier, Torres Grand Orange and Stock’s Grand Gala), and those that are made with a neutral grain spirit base (such as Senior, Bols & DeKuyper). I prefer to use a brandy based Curaçao in the Mai Tai, as the brandy base adds richness, viscosity and complexity to the drink. Avoid using DeKuyper if possible, it’s just not the same quality that it was back in the day when Vic used it.

Things that should never be found in a Mai Tai:

Pineapple juice. Grenadine syrup. Anything that’s blue. Pre-bottled mixers. Roses Lime Juice (or any canned or bottled juice). Sour Mix. Myer’s Dark Rum. 151 Proof rum. Anything called Bacardi. Vodka. Anything called DeKuyper. Orange Juice……You get the picture.

For those of you that might be interested in learning more about just what Tiki is and how it became part of popular American culture, please head over to Cincinnati Cocktails and read my long winded dissertation brief post entitled A Tiki Primer.

Mahalo.