The Mai Tai...
A complete guide to its origin, recipes and the best rums to use
There’s never been a rhapsody in rum that shone so brightly the world over, yet was so universally abused and mistreated.
A drink designed to transport you to lower latitudes and make sophisticated savages of us all… the Mai Tai sits as rightful heir to the tiki throne and bastard son to its founders, Donn Beach and Trader Vic.
The main points behind this iconic drink’s origins are:
- Although Donn and Vic both claimed to have invented the Mai Tai, Vic’s 1944 version is the one that history proclaimed the winner – the one that we all know and love today (when it’s not being smothered in heresy flavoured syrups and candy coloured juices!)
- Vic may well have been ‘inspired’ by the name of Donn’s ‘Mai Tai Swizzle’
- But evidence also points to him trying to reproduce the flavor profile of Donn’s 1937 drink, the Q.B Cooler.
We jump straight into these recipes below, plus how to make some of the ingredients needed. Then, after you’ve had a chance to try the different versions for yourself, we dig a little deeper into the Mai Tai’s libellous past, along with notes on the best rums to use and why.
Make mine a Mai Tai… buy yours today
The Mai Tai - Trader Vic's Original 1944 Version
Ingredients
- 1 oz Dark Jamaican Rum
- 1 oz Aged Martinique Rum
- ½ oz Orange Curacao
- ¼ oz Orgeat
- ¼ oz Rock Candy Syrup - 2:1 ratio rich simple syrup, cold preparation (see recipe in the notes below)
- 1 oz Fresh Lime Juice
- ½ a spent Lime Shell
- 1 Sprig of Mint
Method
- Pour all ingredients into a shaker, then add enough crushed ice to show above the surface of the liquid. Add in a couple of normal ice cubes that will act as 'agitators'.
- Shake vigorously for around 15 seconds. You'll know when it's ready as there'll be a light frosting starting to form on the outside of the shaker. Pour unstrained into a Double Old Fashioned glass. Top up with more crushed ice if there's room.
- Create your garnish by placing your spent lime shell flesh side down on the crushed ice (forming a little green dome). Give the mint a good slap to release the oils and work it into the side of the drink by the lime shell. It should look like a mini tropical island with a palm tree growing behind it. These two aromatic components are key to the taste of the drink.
Notes
- Add 2 cups of sugar (preferably super-fine) and 1 cup of cold (or slightly tepid) water to a large sterilized jar.
- Seal the lid and shake until the sugar is completely dissolved.
- If you're struggling to get it to liquefy, add it to a pan and put it on a very low heat, stirring every few minutes until the liquid is clear.
- Allow to cool and then refrigerate. It should last a couple of weeks.
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The Mai Tai Swizzle - by Donn Beach
Ingredients
- 1 ½ oz Dark Jamaican Rum
- 1 oz Gold Cuban Rum
- ½ oz Cointreau
- ¼ oz Falernum
- ¾ oz Fresh Lime Juice
- 1 oz Fresh Grapefruit Juice
- 6 drops Pernod
- 1 dash Angostura Bitters
- 4 Sprigs of Mint
Method
- Pour all ingredients into a shaker, then add enough crushed ice to show above the surface of the liquid. Add in a couple of normal ice cubes that will act as 'agitators'.
- Shake vigorously for around 15 seconds, until a light frosting starts to form on the outside of the shaker. Pour unstrained into a Double Old Fashioned glass. Top up with more crushed ice if there's room.
- Create your garnish by first giving the mint a good slap to release the oils and then work it down the side of the glass into the ice.
Q.B. Cooler
Ingredients
- 1 oz Gold Jamaican Rum
- 1 oz Light Rum
- ½ oz Demerara Rum
- ¼ oz Falernum
- ½ tsp Ginger Infused Sugar Syrup
- ½ oz Honey Mix
- 1 oz Orange Juice
- ½ oz Fresh Lime Juice
- 1 oz Club Soda
- 2 dashes Angostura Bitters
- 4 oz Crushed Ice
- 1 Sprig of Mint
Method
- Pour all ingredients into a blender, including the soda, then pulse blend, quickly switching on/off 5-6 times. The finished texture should still have fragments of ice - you’re not looking to create a slushy.
- Pour unstrained into a Double Old Fashioned glass.
- Bruise the mint by giving it a good slap to release the oils and then work it down the side of the glass into the ice.
Notes
- Combine equal parts (1:1 ratio) of water and honey in a saucepan, over a low to medium heat.
- Stir until the honey has fully dissolved, but do not let it boil.
- Allow to cool and pour into a sterilized bottle.
- Peel a 2-inch piece of fresh ginger and then cut into thin slices or batons.
- Place into a saucepan along with 1 cup of water and 1 cup of sugar.
- Bring to a boil, stirring until the sugar has dissolved and the liquid has returned to a clear consistency.
- Lower the heat, cover the saucepan and simmer for 2 minutes.
- Then remove from the heat and let it rest for at least 2 hours.
- Strain into a sterilized bottle.
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A rum choice
Trader Vic’s 1944 Mai Tai was created as a drink with one goal in mind – the delivery of a 17 old year J. Wray and Nephew in a manner befitting such a distinguished spirit. Allowing it to speak with confidence and clarity, accentuating it’s finer points and creating a new rum paradigm in the process.
As Vic said in his statement ‘Let’s Set the Record Straight on the Mai Tai’:
“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”.
Many believe its purity of purpose is rivalled only by that of the Daiquiri, a drink that shares at least a passing nod of familial DNA with the Mai Tai.
Unfortunately for us, the popularity of this drink was in no small way responsible for the depletion of most of the world’s reserves of its defining ingredient – the 17 year old Wray and Nephew. Back in 1941, a glass of this particular Jamaican rum at Don the Beachcomber’s would have set you back around $1.15. In this day and age? if you’re able to find a bottle in the first place, you’ll probably need to sell off your favourite yacht to afford the down payment on it.
When Vic used up all his supplies of the 17 year, he needed to find a substitute, so he turned his attention to a 15 year old of the same lineage. Again, with demand so high it wasn’t long before he started literally scraping the bottom of the barrel, so he decided to eke out its lifespan by blending it with other rums.
After much experimentation he found he could reproduce a similar funk and body (if not the same oakiness) by using a mix of the pot stilled, unaged black Jamaican rums, Coruba and Redheart.
Vic named this the ‘First Adjusted Formula’: A 1oz blend of Coruba and Redheart with 1oz of the original 15 year old.
With the 15 year old’s limited lifespan soon coming to an end, Vic needed a more scalable, longer term solution. In an attempt to get as close as possible to the profile of the original 17 year old Wray & Nephew, he created his own blended rum.
A pair of aged Jamaican rums – 15 and 8 year olds – provided the body and pungency of the original, whilst the addition of a rhum Agricole delivered the nuttiness and snappiness of flavor.
This was the ‘Second Adjusted Formula’: A blend of 15 and 8 year old pot stilled Jamaican rums with a Martinique rhum.
Anyone who cares about how their Mai Tai tastes follows the same formula and it’s this version that we recommend in our original 1944 Mai Tai recipe.
However, here’s the twist in this tale…
Did you notice we said ‘nuttiness’ of flavor, rather than mentioning the grassy notes atypical of an agricole? This detail, along with Trader Vic equating Jamaican with Martinique rums in his 1947 bartender guide, gave Martin Cate (founder of Smugglers Cove in San Francisco) the clues needed to fuel his investigatory Mai Tai fire.
After much research, Martin hypothesised that when Vic talks of Martinique Rhum he doesn’t mean the fresh pressed cane juice Agricole that is so popular today, rather he meant the molasses based rhum traditionnel made in the French islands, such as Rhum Negrita.
With this in mind, Martin worked with the folks at Denizen to produce an accessible rum that would get as close as possible to Vic’s Second Adjustment. Using a blend of Jamaican pot stilled rums and a molasses based Martinique rhum, they created an 8 year Reserve truly befitting of the 1944 Mai Tai.
You could say that Martin Cate, following in Vic’s footsteps – deconstructing and then reconstructing, in true tiki fashion – created the ‘Third Adjusted Formula’…
If you want to try your hand at this hallowed formula, why not give the following combinations a go:
Hamilton Jamaican Black + Duquesne Élevé Sous Bois
- Served at Three Dots and a Dash (Chicago), the Hamilton forms a full bodied base whilst the Duquesne, although not a rhum traditionnel, adds a mellow layer but without the same grassy brightness as other agricoles.
Appleton Estate 12 year Jamaica Rum + St. James Hors d’Ages
- These two rums play wonderfully together, which is why they’re used in the 100 dollar Mai Tai (named because all the ingredients together would cost this amount). The Appleton’s brings the robust pot-still flavor whilst the St. James adds just the right amount of smoke to the equation.
- Or swap the St. James for Clement VSOP and you’ve the same combination Jeff ‘Beachbum’ Berry designed for the now closed Luau in Beverly Hills (not the original ‘50’s one, the one that opened in 2008 and closed a year later).
Smith and Cross Navy Strength Rum + Rhum JM Blanc
- The hogo heavy Smith and Cross is incredibly complex and funky. When blended with the bright and lively JM Blanc it produces a combination that’s just bursting with tropical flavour.
Top Tip
Ultimately, it’s all about personal preference. Use whatever blend of rums you think would create the flavour profile you enjoy. One way of doing this is to open a bottle of each rum you’d like to try, hold them next to each other and smell the combined aromas. If you think they’d come together as something fitting of your next Mai Tai (creating a synergy of sorts), then give them a go!
Origin of the Mai Tai
So let’s take a closer look at the OGs of tiki – Donn Beach and ‘Trader Vic’ Bergeron – their respective claims on the Mai Tai and it’s convoluted history.
Donn was the founder of tiki, the one true originator of this faux Polynesian fueled exotic adventure. With ‘Trader Vic’ Bergeron his immediate rival and a powerful catalyst behind the movement in post-war, mid-century America. After decades of competing against each other, encoding their recipes and generally deploying more anti-espionage tactics than the CIA and MI5 combined, these two were always going to come to blows at some point.
And although their covert mixology activities may have protected them professionally, the degree of secrecy and paranoia that surrounded their day-to-day working practices is one of the reasons why their recipes were lost to mankind for decades. And most likely why you’ve never had two Mai Tai’s that taste the same.
A bit of a swizzle
Donn opened the first tiki bar in Hollywood in 1933. The Mai Tai Swizzle was said to have been part of his early drinks offering though it doesn’t seem to have made it as far as a formal menu. Apparently it was not that popular and never really one of Donn’s favourites, so over the next few years it was removed completely
In 1934, Vic opened a bar in Oakland called Hinky Dinks. Three years later he visited Donn’s bar and was so taken by the Polynesian theme, the whole faux South Seas setting, that he came back every night for a week, absorbing everything he could. He then took this inspiration to fuel the refitting, transformation and re-branding of Hinky Dinks into ‘Trader Vics’.
‘Mai Tai!’ was the cry
In 1944 Victor Bergeron invented his Mai Tai. He’d had a good run of success with a number of rum drinks and he felt like a new one was in order. He was at his Oakland restaurant when an opportunity presented itself. As Vic tells it, he made up this exotic concoction for two visiting Tahitian friends, Ham and Carrie Guild. When he handed it to Carrie she declared ‘Maita’i roa a’e!’, which in Tahitian translates as ‘out of this world – the best’.
The ‘Mai Tai’ as it was christened, earned its place on his Oakland restaurant’s menu and was carried over to his Seattle branch in ’48. But it wasn’t till 1953, when Vic took the Mai Tai to the Hawaiian Islands, that it became truly popular. Consulting at the Royal Hawaiian, Moana and Surfrider hotels, he put a variation of the drink on their cocktail lists. And whether its popularity grew due to the drink itself, its exotic sounding name, or because it was just in the right time and the right place, either way, it snowballed from being a remarkable drink to the global tiki icon we know and love today.
With such popularity comes great competition, and it wasn’t long before Donn, feeling the commercial pressure, put the Mai Tai Swizzle back on his menu and claimed its origin story for his own.
There’s nothing cooler
Bearing in mind that the swizzle is grapefruit forward (one of Donn’s trademark ingredients) and doesn’t highlight the rum in anywhere near the same way as Vic’s Mai Tai, the only similarity was in the name. But what Vic’s Mai Tai did taste like was another drink on Don’s 1937 menu… The Q.B. Cooler.
A drink that, according to Edward (Mick) Brownlee, a tiki carver and friend of Don’s, Vic stole and rebranded as the Mai Tai. (Something Don had told him in 1950 and which he also told to journalist Rick Carroll, 30 years later).
And the Q.B. Cooler is definitely similar to Trader Vics ’44 Mai Tai. It’s not exactly the same, but it’s definitely playing in the same ballpark. Now whether this was due to a conscious decision of Vic’s to reproduce a drink he’d tasted 7 years earlier, or whether it was merely a serendipitous byproduct of him creating drink after drink, year after year, is anyone’s guess.
A touch of genius
Frankly, as Beachbum Berry points out, if he did reverse engineer it, improve upon it and do it with half the ingredients, it was one hell of a feat in and of itself!
If you look objectively at what Vic did, he took the classic Daiquiri components (sweet, sour, strong, weak) – ones that harken back to early Bajan punches and the days of British Navy Grog. Then used his schooling in their application from the 7 days he spent learning from Cuban bartender Constante Ribalaigua Vert to perfect them. A schooling that most definitely introduced him to the ‘Golden Glove’, a heavyweight version of Constante’s Daiquiri No.2…
And there we have Vic’s touch of genius, he split the ‘sweet’ components into 3 parts – rock candy syrup, orange curaçao instead of the oft used juices, and orgeat, an ingredient that had never been used at the Beachcomber – and combined them in a way that showcased that classic J.Wray 17 year old in a manner befitting of its legend.
Victor was obviously ‘inspired’ by Don’s overall style (from the 7 nights he spent at ‘The Beachcomber’… you can start to see the pattern here…), admitting in his autobiography that he’d even bought decor and props for his own restaurant from him. But he made his own distinct and individual mark on tiki and the drinks that formed the backbone of the movement. If you look beyond the industry paranoia, Vic wasn’t in the habit of claiming Don’s glory for his own. Although he put a ‘Zombie’ on his menu, it was nothing like Don’s original. He never tried to lay claim to the Navy Grog, though he obviously created a riff. And he even gave praise to Don on the back of his vintage cocktail menus in his “Ode to Rum”.
Hell, he’s even been known to send exuberant fans his original Mai Tai recipe in handwritten letters! (Although Victor was supposedly tough on his staff he was great with his customers, a factor that definitely contributed to his success).
So why the furore? Why the legal shenanigans and inflated blustering? Why did it get so nasty?
“Anybody who says I didn’t create this drink is a dirty stinker.”
– Trader Vic
Business. Revenue. Pure and simple, it affected the bottom-line. It seems Trader Vic was ok with a little professional back and forth between himself and long term frenemy Don. But what he wasn’t going to stomach was anything that screwed with his business. Particularly at a copyright level.
So in 1970, when the Sun-Vac Corporation licenced the ‘Don the Beachcomber’ name to put on their premixes, including a Mai Tai one, Vic sued them
After he presented a substantial body of evidence, including signed statements from Carrie and Ham Guild, they settled out of court (see Tiki Style and The Book of Tiki by Sven Kirsten for the original statement from Carrie Wright, (previously Guild)).
The final word on the subject?
“I’ve said this a million times. We originated this drink; we made the first Mai Tai; we named the drink. A lot of bastards all over the country have copied it and copyrighted it and claimed it for their own. I hope they get the pox. They’re a bunch of lousy bastards for copying my drink.”
– 1976 “Trader Vic’s Helluva Man’s Cookbook”
Tiki is all about sensationalism, intrigue and drama. Things that could’ve been and never were. A suspension of belief that allows us to escape to a land exotic. The Mai Tai fits this bill through and through. Nuff said. 🏝
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Thank you. Mahalo.
