The Mai Tai is one of the most famous Tiki drinks in the world. Composed of rum, orange curaçao, fresh lime juice and orgeat (a nuanced almond syrup), it’s held sway over cocktail enthusiasts and Tiki aficionados for decades. It even enjoyed a star turn in the Elvis film “Blue Hawaii.”
Victor “Trader Vic” Bergeron is often credited with inventing the drink at his Trader Vic’s bar in the 1940s, though it’s likely that Donn Beach laid the groundwork for the famous recipe during the 1930s at his Don the Beachcomber bar. The original Trader Vic’s recipe featured Jamaica’s J. Wray & Nephew rum. Once Bergeron ran out of his supply, he moved to blending rums in an attempt to create a similar flavor profile.
While the Mai Tai was created as a way to showcase the flavors of good-quality rum, it took a wrong turn over the decades as bartenders employed bottled juices and mixers. Those yielded neon-colored or overly sweet cocktails. Fortunately, a renewed interest in Tiki cocktails has returned the Mai Tai to prominence as a fresh, balanced, rum-forward cocktail.
Today’s bartenders continue the tradition of blending rums, aiming to find the optimal combination of flavor, depth and complexity. Some barkeeps utilize a crisp white rum alongside a dark overproof rum. Others play with high-ester Jamaican rums and grassy rhum agricole. There isn’t one right answer, but it’s helpful to consider four traits when creating your own rum blend: ABV, age, production methods and the raw materials used to make the rum. Find harmony in the details, and you might create the next great Mai Tai.
Once the drink is shaken and served over ice (crushed is best), it’s time for the garnish. Go wild, if you’re feeling creative. Some Mai Tais feature everything from pineapple wedges to cherries on top. But if you’d like to keep the presentation cool and classic, a lime wheel and mint spring are a fine choice.
And as for the name: Supposedly, the first person to try the cocktail was said to cry out “Mai Tai!” which means “the best—out of this world” in Tahitian.
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Tim Nusog
1 1/2 ounces white rum
3/4 ounce orange curaçao
3/4 ounce lime juice, freshly squeezed
1/2 ounce orgeat
1/2 ounce dark rum
Garnish: lime wheel
Garnish: mint sprig
Add the white rum, curaçao, lime juice and orgeat into a shaker with crushed ice and shake lightly (about 3 seconds).
Pour into a double rocks glass.
Float the dark rum over the top.
Garnish with a lime wheel and mint sprig.
Contrary to how bars were serving it in the ’90s and early 2000s, a real Mai Tai is no haphazard fruit-salad mishmash—it’s a classic straight to its rummy core. But like many drinks that involve fruit juices, it got muddied along the way, with shortcuts and liberties that often left you with a headache and a literal bad taste in your mouth, instead of memories of tropical splendor. But that degradation will be suffered no more—it’s the moment of the Mai Tai, and here’s what it’s all about.
While it’s impossible to give full credit to one maker of the Mai Tai, its invention is likely a one-two punch of two Tiki icons: Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt (aka Donn Beach) and Victor “Trader Vic” Bergeron. Beach seemingly started the footprint for it in the 1930s at his famed Don the Beachcomber in Hollywood (now in Huntington Beach, California.), but Trader Vic certainly appears to be the barman who perfected the drink as we know it today sometime in the 1940s at his renowned original Trader Vic’s, in California’s East Bay.
“While bastardized over the years, the Mai Tai is quite a dry, crisp and boozy cocktail,” says Meaghan Dorman of Dear Irving in New York City. Texture, however, is another matter. Her tweaked version includes lime juice, orgeat, Clément Créole Shrubb, Rhum JM and Appleton Estate Reserve Blend Jamaican rum. “The richness and almond fat of the orgeat lengthens the finish and makes it rounder,” she says. “The hit of rhum agricole adds a fresh, grassy funk to the richer Jamaican rum, keeping it dynamic.”
“Coming at this from nearly 20 years of making Mai Tais, I want to see the drink on crushed ice, with a nice frost on the outside of the glass,” says Tiki maven Martin Cate, the owner of San Francisco’s Smuggler’s Cove. “The dilution rate of crushed ice is slower.” For him, that means shaking it with crushed ice and dumping the entire contents of the shaker into your glass. “If you use just a little, then you shake and the drink melts it and becomes insipid and watery. But a good solid scoop of crushed ice sits really well for a long time.”
“Every Mai Tai since Trader Vic’s original, which featured 17-year-old Wray & Nephew, has been an attempt to recreate a rum that hasn’t been produced for decades,” says New York City bartender Ray Sakover. “This rum was the driving force behind the classic Mai Tai. … In order to replicate the original flavor of the Wray & Nephew 17, Vic used a pot-still Jamaican rum and a Martinique rhum. … Most bartenders since have used this or similar blends to stay true to what we believe the original might have tasted like.”
While a Martini looks best with a single olive or lemon twist, and a Negroni only needs an orange peel, with the Mai Tai, bigger is better. “My advice on garnish is go crazy—a little cocktail umbrella, pineapple slice, tropical flower,” says Shawn Chen of RedFarm and Decoy in New York City. “I like to embrace the Tiki culture. When it comes to garnishes, it should make you feel like you’re being transported to a tropical paradise.”
“The history of the Mai Tai came out of people’s yearning for a place that’s carefree and peaceful after the Great Depression,” says Chen. Indeed, one of the charms of the Mai Tai is its ability to make one forget one’s troubles, both large and small.
The Mai Tai is one of those cocktails, along with classics such as the Daiquiri, Margarita, Martini and Old Fashioned, where the quality of its execution signals the proficiency of the person who makes it. It’s the calling card for many cocktail enthusiasts and bartenders at Tiki cocktail bars because it serves as a sort of quality assurance check: If it’s built properly and balanced, then another cocktail round is in the cards, but if it turns out subpar, then the guest is best advised to move on to wine or beer. To ensure your Mai Tai doesn’t fall flat, in addition to perfecting your technique, you’ll want to consider developing a signature rum blend.
The layering of rums to create a unique flavor profile of depth and complexity is a concept as old as the Tiki bar itself, initiated by the father of Tiki, Donn Beach (of Don the Beachcomber), in 1934. “[Beach] was the first to realize that, as he once put it, ‘what one rum can’t give you, three rums can,’” says Jeff “Beachbum” Berry, a Tiki historian and the owner of Latitude 29 in New Orleans. A balanced rum blend is the foundation for creating thought-provoking complexity in a simple cocktail such as the Mai Tai, and it’s also an expression of a bartender’s understanding and appreciation of flavor.
“Blends achieve the complexity required to make the other ingredients in the Mai Tai—orange curacao, orgeat (almond syrup enhanced with rose or orange blossom water) and lime—pop,” says Shannon Mustipher, the beverage director of Glady’s Rum Bar and the author of “Tiki: Modern Tropical Cocktails.” “One rum will not be able to amplify all of these elements or elevate them to a level that would result in a remarkable cocktail.”
Martin Cate, the owner of Smuggler’s Cove and a James Beard award-winning author for his book “Smuggler’s Cove: Exotic Cocktails, Rum, and the Cult of Tiki,” echoes Beach’s sentiment that a blend of multiple rums can produce a unique flavor profile that simply isn’t attainable from a single bottling. “For example, you might create a cocktail with 2 ounces of 100% high-ester Jamaican rum, and it might well be delicious, but you might also consider splitting that with something light-bodied but still woody and characterful,” says Cate. “[That way] the funk doesn’t overpower the rest of the drink. Or you might want to tamp down an overproof rum with a 40% ABV rum.” Developing a unique balance of multiple styles of rums is a way to transform a cocktail like the Mai Tai from one-dimensional to one of depth and balance.
The original Mai Tai recipe, which was created by the other founding father of Tiki, Trader Vic, used Wray & Nephew 17 Year Jamaican rum as its base. Trader Vic’s new concoction was so popular that its success throughout the Trader Vic bars caused a significant depletion in the stock of this special Jamaican rum. Wray & Nephew decided not to continue production of that rum, leaving Vic and company without their signature rum for their most popular cocktail. The solution? Vic’s bar team employed Beach’s rum-blending technique and developed a rum that closely emulated the characteristics of the Wray & Nephew.
“To replace the rum, [ Vic] blended pot still (high-ester) Jamaican rum with Rhum Grande Arome, from Le Galleon, who produces the only Martinican rhum distilled from molasses post-1920,” says Mustipher. “Grand Arome was never consumed on its own but instead was used to enhance other rums and in culinary applications.” Trader Vic’s original records of the recipe did not specify Grand Arome, though, only Martinican rhum—a detail that has been uncovered only recently. Cate recommends trying to replicate Wray & Nephew 17 Year through a blend of 100% pot still Jamaican rums, but both approaches have merit.
“Researching the Mai Tai impressed upon me that some cocktails in the Tiki canon require blends to express the original intent of a classic recipe,” says Mustipher. “I would under no circumstance serve a Mai Tai with just one rum; it’s like serving a Daiquiri with whiskey.” It’s a drink that begs for a mix of rums for added nuance and sophistication.
As a noted Tiki expert, Cate also served as a consultant on Denizen Merchant’s Reserve, a blended rum designed to imitate Trader Vic’s blend for his Mai Tai after Wray & Nephew 17 Year was discontinued.
When it comes to tasting and blending, many of the decisions made are subjective. Depending on what the goal is—which flavor profile you wish to achieve—your blend can take an infinite number of forms. It’s this creative process that makes blending more of an art than a science. Measuring proportions of each rum helps maintain consistency over time and helps you keep track of what you prefer versus what you don’t, but the tasting and interpretation of these rhum rhapsodies showcases a bartender’s exquisite ability to build flavor.
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Mustipher, who previously worked in wine, compares blending rums to the blend of grapes in a wine, pointing out that each component ideally will contribute a necessary element to the overall structure of the final product. “I learned that some wines are very aromatic on their own and drinking them would be akin to drinking perfume,” says Mustipher. “Some wines are big and round but offer nothing exciting in the realm of aroma on the nose. Others are lacking in their finish; they taste great upfront, but the flavors don’t linger past a few seconds. Think about Cotes du Rhone. The [individual types of] grapes in the wine are one note; together, they make an iconic style.” This same concept applies to rums. Although you can go wild with the number of rums in a blend, Cate recommends no more than three, with a hard maximum of five.
Once you’ve decided the general flavor and style you’re aiming for, the components to keep in mind once you begin mixing are ABV, aging, production methods and the raw materials used in making the rum. Understanding these factors before you start will help you make educated decisions once you begin developing your blend. And “tasting” can mostly be done with the nose. The understanding of how it’s produced and aged will help fill in the blanks of texture, mouthfeel and the like.
Alcohol percentage correlates with a spirit’s body as well as its intensity of flavor in some cases. For rum blends in a Mai Tai, which receives ample dilution in the mixing process, the goal is to keep the rum mix at a proof of at least 100 in order to not lose its character in the cocktail. You can develop a blend with a high ABV and proof it down with water to get it to an ABV that’s cocktail-friendly. You may wish to use this proof calculator for that process.
The type of wood in which the rum has been aged and for how long are important considerations because woods can heavily influence the texture and flavor of rums. Aged rums contribute to the flavor, texture and tannic structure of a blend. They can serve as an excellent backbone, depending on your goals for the rum blend.
Getting too deep into this vast topic can be like diving down a rabbit hole, but understanding how a rum is made can be very telling as to how much flavor it will add to the mix. For example: Is it pot distilled? If so, expect a high-ester rum with great flavor. Multiple column-distilled rums typically yield product that is less flavorful but can lighten the blend’s body and contribute to the ABV.
Another aspect of production to consider is how the raw materials are fermented and for how long. Shorter fermentations result in lighter rums (Spanish style), where longer fermentations will produce a heavier rum (French or English style). Understanding the nuances of how a rum is produced can help you make informed decisions for creating a balanced blend.
Is the rum made from fresh sugar cane juice, as with rhum agricole and clairin, or from a sugar cane byproduct such as molasses, as most rums are? A knowledge of the various styles of rum will help indicate what types of flavors each will add to the blend.
Shannon Mustipher’s Mai Tai blend: 3 parts Hamilton 86 demerara rum with 1 part 100-proof rhum agricole (she recommends Paranubes)
Jeff “Beachbum” Berry’s Mai Tai blend: Equal parts Rhum Clément V.S.O.P and Appleton Estate 12 Year Rare Blend
Martin Cate’s Mai Tai blend: A blend of no more than three aged pot-still Jamaican rums
Tiki is the ska music of the cocktail world—a genre with a relatively small but fiercely devoted band of fans. But outside of that reverent circle of enthusiasts, there’s a whole lot of misunderstanding about the nuances that make all that fun seem so entirely effortless.
To many a bartender, the Mai Tai is the quintessential torch carrier of Tiki, a rummy, nutty, citrusy mix that’s not simply the result of a breezy happy accident—far from it. But after Tiki made its flowery foray into American culture between the 1930s and ’50s, thanks to tropical-minded entrepreneurs like Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt (a.k.a. Donn Beach) and Victor Jules Bergeron (a.k.a. Trader Vic), the poor Mai Tai got a bit mangled.
“I see a Mai Tai on a lot of menus and think, Oh, cool!” says bartender Sarah Ann Clarke of Tiki den Hidden Harbor in Pittsburgh. “But then I look at the list of ingredients—bright red maraschino cherries and bottled fruit juice—and that’s getting away from what the drink is supposed to be.”
The flame that ignites the heart and soul of a Mai Tai comes from a conscious layering of both rich and bright, sweet and tart flavors and texture. “The Mai Tai is fairly simple seeming, but it’s complex and not too sweet. I really love the straight-forwardness of it and the way all the ingredients play together,” says Clarke.
Much credit for that complexity comes from the one-two punch of the rums typically used: Jamaican and, often, Martinique—one rich and earthy from its pot-distilled molasses base, one zippy and floral, as distilled from freshly pressed cane juice.
That layering of rum styles is an ode to the original single rum that kicked off a tropical revolution—Jamaica’s J. Wray & Nephew. It was, by most accounts, used in the drink invented by Bergeron, the founder of the Trader Vic’s Tiki restaurant empire, which began in 1934 with one Oakland, Calif., spot and now has locations everywhere from Munich to Manama, Bahrain.
“He blew through his supply and had to switch to blending rums,” says Martin Cate, the author of “Smuggler’s Cove: Exotic Cocktails, Rum, and the Cult of Tiki” and owner of the bar Smuggler’s Cove in San Francisco. “For him, it was all about keeping the rums involved full-bodied. You can make a Mai Tai with a light-bodied, clean, column-still rum, but it’s not as interesting as a drink.”
Add to that the nutty sweetness of orgeat (an almond syrup most commonly found in French and Italian culinary culture), orange liqueur and lime, and suddenly there’s a symphony of flavor afoot.
“The Jamaican rum is super funky, and the Martinique rum is grassy and vegetal,” says Clarke. “Together, they make an interesting combo, and it’s a great intro for those who are new to Tiki.”
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But was Bergeron the true inventor of the marvelous Mai Tai, or was it Beach? Tiki historian Jeff “Beachbum” Berry, the owner of New Orleans’ ode to Tikidom, Latitude 29, unearthed a couple of plausible yet differing answers to that question, although it does appear that Bergeron’s version was his and his alone and the one that prevails today.
According to Berry, Beach’s widow, Phoebe Beach, recalls her husband inventing a drink he called the Mai Tai Swizzle in 1933, but it didn’t stick in the cocktail canon and disappeared from his famous bar and restaurant Don the Beachcomber’s menu sometime before 1937.
Berry also hunted down Bergeron’s longtime executive assistant, Fred Fung, who affirms that Bergeron developed his own Mai Tai in 1944 without any knowledge of Beach’s version 10 years prior. “But then again, Beach’s friend Mick Brownlee, who carved Tikis for Beach throughout the 1950s, said that Bergeron was trying to reverse-engineer a drink he liked at Don the Beachcomber’s called the Q.B. Cooler,” says Berry.
More than the J. Wray & Nephew and subsequent search for the perfect facsimile of it, one of Bergeron’s other enduring contributions was the orgeat, which was not used by Beach. “Vic was part French Canadian, and his parents had a grocery store, where they sold it,” says Cate. “He enjoyed it as a kid.” Bergeron found that a little almond syrup added a lovely accent and some much-needed depth, both soft and earthy, to the rum and citrus. He went on to use it in two other of his paradisiacal creations: the Scorpion and the Fog Cutter.
“By the time Bergeron finished, he had created an entirely new formula, one he could rightly call his own,” says Berry of the Bergeron vs. Beach debate. “The two drinks have nothing in common except lime juice and rum, and not even the same rum.”
Today, the rum has become less of a conundrum and more of an arena where bartenders of sharp palate and flowery dress code play.
“I’m not sure what the correct result is,” says Brian Miller, a partner and the beverage director of The Polynesian in New York City. “I’m just trying to replicate Vic’s masterpiece with what I have at my disposal.” For Miller, that’s a blend of Jamaican, demerara and agricole rums. In the spirit of Bergeron, he and others find their own way to the ultimate expression of the drink through myriad combinations of its mainstay spirit.
“That’s what’s fun about the drink,” says Cate. “You can be a purist about the structure, but the rum world has a lot of flexibility. I’ve gone through multiple variations in my Mai Tai. It’s one of these things I’m never done playing with. When I see people mixing around, I say, hey, why not? That’s cool as long as your rums are talking to you.”
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