Oakland, California · 1944
Mai Tai
No pineapple. Trader Vic went to his grave on this point.
- Created by
- Victor "Trader Vic" Bergeron
- Tastes like
- Almond, lime, and aged rum — dry, nutty, not remotely sweet
- Glass
- Double old-fashioned
- Garnish
- The spent lime shell and a mint sprig
Ingredients
- 2 ozaged Jamaican rum (or a split of aged Jamaican and Martinique rhum agricole)
- 1/2 ozorange curaçao
- 1/4 ozorgeat
- 1/4 ozrock candy syrup (or simple syrup)
- 1 ozfresh lime juice (the juice of one lime)
Method
- 1.Shake everything with crushed ice for about 10 seconds.
- 2.Pour unstrained into a double old-fashioned glass.
- 3.Sink the spent lime shell into the drink — it is the island in the glass, and Vic meant it literally.
- 4.Slap a mint sprig against your palm to wake it up and set it against the shell.
In 1944 Victor Bergeron reached for a seventeen-year-old J. Wray & Nephew Jamaican rum, added lime, curaçao, orgeat, and rock candy syrup, and handed it across the bar to two friends visiting from Tahiti. Carrie Guild tasted it and said "Maita'i roa ae" — Tahitian for roughly "out of this world, the best." Vic said the drink named itself.
It is a dry, almond-scented rum sour with an enormous amount of rum in it, and it looks nothing like what most bars serve. There is no pineapple juice, no orange juice, no grenadine, and nothing red.
The original rum is gone — the world drank the entire supply of aged Wray & Nephew chasing this drink — which is why the modern move is a split base of aged Jamaican rum and Martinique rhum agricole to rebuild the funk and the grassiness together.
On the record
Donn Beach claimed a Mai Tai of his own dating to 1933, and the two men feuded over the credit for decades. Vic's 1944 version is the one the world actually drinks and the one every serious tiki bar means when it prints the name.
Thatch note
If it arrives red, or tastes like a fruit cup, you are drinking a hotel Mai Tai. That is a different drink wearing this one's name, and it is worth knowing the difference before you judge the original.