The Mai Tai ( ) is a

cocktail A cocktail is a mixed drink, usually alcoholic beverage, alcoholic. Most commonly, a cocktail is a combination of one or more liquor, spirits mixed with other ingredients, such as juices, flavored syrups, tonic water, Shrub (drink), shrubs, and ...

made of

rum Rum is a liquor made by fermenting and then distilling sugarcane molasses or sugarcane juice. The distillate, a clear liquid, is often aged in barrels of oak. Rum originated in the Caribbean in the 17th century, but today it is produced i ...

Curaçao liqueur Curaçao, officially the Country of Curaçao, is a constituent island country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located in the southern Caribbean Sea (specifically the Dutch Caribbean region), about north of Venezuela. Curaçao includ ...

, orgeat syrup, and lime juice. It is one of the characteristic cocktails in Tiki culture.

History

Victor J. Bergeron claimed to have invented the Mai Tai in 1944 at his restaurant, Trader Vic's, in Oakland, California, US. Trader Vic's forerunner, Donn Beach, claimed to have instead first created it in 1933, although a longtime colleague said that Beach was actually just alleging that the Mai Tai was based on his Q.B. Cooler cocktail. Don the Beachcomber's recipe is more complex than Vic's and some believe it tastes quite different. Others believe that, despite the difference in ingredients, the Q.B. Cooler tastes quite similar. The Mai Tai was introduced in Hawaii in 1953 when Bergeron created a cocktail menu for the Matson Company hotels the Royal Hawaiian Hotel and Moana Hotel. The cocktail became a hit and was called the "top tourist tantalizer" in 1959. In the years thereafter, pineapple juice, orange juice, and a dark rum float became commonly used in Mai Tais produced in Hawaii. The name was allegedly taken from ''maitaʻi'', the Tahitian word for "good" or "excellence", although the drink is usually spelled as two words, sometimes hyphenated or capitalized.

Recipe

Most current recipes for Mai Tais based on Trader Vic's 1944 recipe include

, lime juice, orgeat syrup, and orange liqueur (typically orange curaçao). Variants may include the addition of amaretto, falernum,

bitters A bitters (plural also ''bitters'') is traditionally an Alcoholic drink, alcoholic preparation flavored with botanical matter for a Bitterness (taste), bitter or bittersweet Flavoring, flavor. Originally, numerous longstanding brands of bitters ...

, grenadine, orange, pineapple and grapefruit juices, and so on. This wide variance in ingredients used exists because Trader Vic's kept the recipe unpublished for nearly 30 years, forcing some competitors to guess at the ingredients to satisfy customers, though various recipes published in newspapers in the 1950s and 1960s did include key ingredients such as orgeat, orange curaçao, and rock candy syrup. Various books from Victor Bergeron described using rum from Jamaica as well as from Martinique, which in modern usage is a , being a rum made from

sugarcane juice Sugarcane juice is the liquid extracted from pressed sugarcane. It is consumed as a beverage in many places, especially where sugarcane is commercially grown, such as Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, North Africa, mainly Egypt, and also ...

rather than molasses. As noted in ''Smuggler's Cove'' by Martin Cate and Rebecca Cate, the Martinique rums used by Bergeron in the 1950s were most certainly not agricole rums. Overproof rums are sometimes added to make stronger versions, but Cate says references to such use as being from "the old way" was only because a 151 proof (75%)

demerara Demerara (; , ) is a historical region in the Guianas, on the north coast of South America, now part of the country of Guyana. It was a colony of the Dutch West India Company between 1745 and 1792 and a colony of the Dutch state from 1792 unti ...

float was the preferred variation of a frequent elderly customer.

Culture

The Mai Tai became a popular cocktail in the 1950s–60s and many restaurants, particularly tiki-themed restaurants or bars, served them. The Mai Tai was also prominently featured in the 1961

Elvis Presley Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977) was an American singer and actor. Referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Elvis Presley, one of the most significant cultural figures of the ...

film '' Blue Hawaii''. The Mai Tai was named the official cocktail of the city by the

Oakland, California Oakland is a city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. It is the county seat and most populous city in Alameda County, California, Alameda County, with a population of 440,646 in 2020. A major We ...

city council.https://oakland.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=M&ID=1229120&GUID=8A4E5F00-8DEF-4485-B669-A0DC57001EA0

References

External links

{{Authority control Californian cuisine Cocktails with fruit liqueur Cocktails with lime juice Cocktails with rum Cocktails with triple sec or curaçao Cuisine of the Western United States Hawaiian alcoholic drinks Tiki culture Tiki drinks