The Mai Tai was created by Dealer Vic in 1944 and its authentic recipe could be very well-known, even when many average-quality bars don’t adhere to it. We even know the origin of its title: based on Vic, he created the drink to focus on a long-aged Jamaican rum and served it to 2 associates visiting from Tahiti. Upon making an attempt it, one described it as “mai tai,” a Tahitian slang for “superior.”
The origin and recipe for the Mai Tai are crystal clear… so long as you consider the Dealer Vic model. Vic wasn’t the originator of the Tiki bar and cocktail craze; that was Donn Seashore of Don the Beachcomber’s. Vic visited Don the Beachcomber’s in Hollywood, noticed its potential, and returned house to Oakland to redecorate his bar Hinky Dinks and rename it Dealer Vic’s. Not solely did Vic “borrow” the tropical bar idea from Donn, Donn later accused Vic of ripping off the Mai Tai from a drink of his known as the Q.B. Cooler.
Tiki bar operators on this period saved their cocktail recipes secret even from most of their very own employees in order that bartenders couldn’t go away to recreate them at competing bars. So Vic would have needed to style the Q.B. Cooler and recreate its recipe from reminiscence.
The Q.B. Cooler contained three sorts of rum, orange and lime juices, honey, falernum, ginger syrup, bitters, and soda water. The Mai Tai contained one form of rum, orange liqueur, lime, orgeat, and sugar syrup. Each have been garnished with mint and each contained rum and lime, however in any other case they didn’t have some other overlapping components, and so they positive don’t sound like they’d style the identical. And whereas we’ll by no means know for positive if the Q.B. Cooler impressed the extra well-known cocktail, in Beachbum Berry Remixed, creator Jeff Berry wrote, “It does certainly style just like the Dealer’s Mai Tai.”
Regardless of (most likely) inventing the Mai Tai in 1944, Dealer Vic didn’t reveal his precise recipe till 1970, as a part of a lawsuit towards Don the Beachcomber’s bottled Mai Tai combine. The combination claimed it originated at Don the Beachcomber’s, and at this level Vic was fed up with imitation copies of his drink. Vic later instructed his story on the document, that the drink was first created with 17-year-old J. Wray & Nephew rum from Jamaica. He ran via the world’s provide of this rum in a number of years and changed it with a 15 yr rum from the identical producer, after which within the Nineteen Fifties with a mix of darkish Jamaican rum and rum from Martinique.
And that brings us to the following thriller. Martinique is known for its rhum agricole; that’s, rum distilled from fermented contemporary sugar cane juice relatively than molasses. This rum has a definite grassy taste and is used within the island’s well-known Ti’ Punch. Many Tiki bartenders looking for to comply with genuine historic recipes reached for rhum agricole and a Jamaican rum to combine collectively. I’ve had loads of Mai Tais made this manner; they’ve all tasted nice.
However alas, they have been most likely not as genuine because the bartenders supposed. Smuggler’s Cove creator Martin Cate has steered that through the Thirties and ’40s, the rum from Martinique may extra seemingly have been molasses-based rum. And in a detailed weblog publish, Cocktail Wonk author and Minimalist Tiki creator Matt Pietrek shared a few of his analysis on the topic, discovering that rhum agricole was extra of a locals’ rum whereas molasses based mostly rums have been most definitely to be exported. Pietrek shared classic tasting profiles and manufacturing info, however concluded that the true taste profile the Martinique rum Dealer Vic used within the Nineteen Fifties period Mai Tai stays a thriller.
Fortunately for us, the Mai Tai nonetheless tastes fairly good so long as you utilize a full-bodied aged rum, regardless of from which nation it got here. For many people, the extra urgent thriller in regards to the drink, when served a blue-colored Mai Tai in a plastic coconut in a cheesy vacationer bar, is “What the heck else did you place in it?”
