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Mai Rum Cocktail 3 Letters

Mai Rum Cocktail 3 Letters – If Zombie is the drink that put Tiki (and Donn Beach) on the map, Mai Tai is the drink that cemented its (and Trader Vic’s) enduring place in American cocktail consciousness.

Tiki drinks, to me, are like blues songs. There are too many to count, and while a few stand out, they generally sound the same because they’re based on the same three chords. With blues, those chords are I IV V. With Tiki drinks, those chords are rum, lime, and fruit, and to see them in action, we need look no further than the Mai Tai. .

Mai Rum Cocktail 3 Letters

As Victor Bergeron recounts, the Mai Tai was inspired by an exceptional rum, Wray and Nephew 17. Trader Vic didn’t have exclusive jurisdiction over W&N 17, you could get a glass of it at Don the Beachcomber’s for $1.15 in 1941, but Vic was so enamored with this particular expression that he chose to present it solo rather than blending it with other rums as had become the norm in Tiki mixology. It started with lime – of course – but then chose to split its “sweet” component into 3 parts, and that’s where things get interesting. One of those parts is the sugar syrup, nothing fancy, but the second is the orange curacao, using a liqueur instead of the typical juice, and the third is the orgeat, an ingredient that you won’t find at the Beachcomber. Victor may have learned everything he knew from pilfering Donn Beach’s style, but once he got started he added components that Donn never considered, opening up the Tiki palette considerably.

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Mai Tai became THE Tiki drink, and it pissed off Donn Beach to no end. It wasn’t enough that Trader Vic had stolen his style, now he had stolen the crown as the world’s preeminent Tiki mixologist, a category coined by Donn. So he filed a complaint. He first claimed that he drank a drink called Mai Tai for years before Vic released his version, which was true, but this recipe was very different from the recipe used by Trader Vic. Second, Donn claimed that Vic stole the formula for his Mai Tai impersonation of a Beachcomber drink called the “Q.B. Cooler.”

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This claim is a bit like the Rolling Stones saying that ZZ Top stole the “La Grange” formula from their song “Shake Your Hips.” Sure, the two seem similar, but the Stones stole all their vibe from players like Muddy Waters and Son House, so who were they to complain? After all, it wasn’t like Donn had admitted to taking the formula for more than half of his own Planter’s Punch drinks. In the end, still more business-savvy than the old Mr. Gantt, Vic won the case.

Jeff “Beachbum” Berry points out in his book Potions of the Caribbean that a closer model of the Mai Tai is the Golden Glove cocktail of Hemingway’s favorite Cuban bartender, Constante Ribalaigua Vert. Just as Vic spent a week going nightly to Don the Beachcomber before transforming his bar into a faux South Seas paradise, he spent seven days in Havana studying Constante’s every move. Vic even featured some of Constante’s drinks on his early menus, but he asked the man if he could do so before he left Cuba and, ever the gentleman, Señor Vert gave his blessing. Vic had also approached Donn Beach after his week in Hollywood proposing that the two go into business together, but Donn gave him the brush, a decision he must have regretted on some level years later.

I don’t think the recipe is what made Mai Tai so famous. For one, the drink didn’t take off for more than a decade after Vic put it on the menu at his Oakland restaurant. It wasn’t until the Mai Tai landed on the Royal Hawaiian’s cocktail list (an advice gig for Vic) that its fame began to spread. Second, a good percentage of the Mai Tais sung were from competing bars and had recipes that looked nothing like the original. I know you’ve heard me say this before, but I think it’s the name that made Mai Tai a legend. When Donn Beach used the name, his customers were Angelenos. Fun and bold names like Cobra’s Fang (or Zombie) were more likely to appeal to them. But when Vic put Mai Tai on the menu at Hawaii’s most prestigious hotel, tourism in the 50th state was still a new cultural phenomenon, and people wanted a story to tell their friends when they returned. The Mai Tai name was just foreign enough to sound authentic yet memorable enough to stick. Still, if you’re picky about your ingredients, Mai Tai can be a great drink, even if it’s not much different from the Rum Rhapsodies that came before it.

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It is often said that the popularity of Mai Tai led to the extinction of Wray and Nephew’s 17 year old rum. Whether that’s the case or not, it’s true that the only way to get that particular rum today is to shell out thousands and thousands of dollars to buy a vintage bottle from a collector. For the rest of us, we’ll have to do what Vic did: modify the recipe using a mix.

While he would often quote a blend of aged Jamaican rum with golden Puerto Rican rum when sharing the recipe with people who wrote to him (Vic was great with customers even though he was tough on his staff), you get a more accurate result by mixing an old Jamaican with agricultural golden rum. The latter provides an appropriate level of funk to approximate the particularly hogo’d original. Personally, I like a 12 year pairing of Appleton Estate and St. George farm viuex. For orgeat, nothing better than Small Hand Foods. And when it comes to orange liqueur, Pierre Ferrand’s Curaçao was developed for recipes like this.

Crush the ice with a mallet and a Lewis bag until the pieces are small but not powdered. Pull out a giant handful (enough to fill an Old Fashioned glass 2/3 full) and put it in your shaker, then add the other ingredients.

Mai Rum Cocktail 3 Letters

Shake hard for 10 seconds, then pour everything, ice and all, into this cup. Garnish by floating one of the lime halves (to represent an island), then add a few sprigs of mint (to represent a palm tree.) Vic has never used these colorful little umbrellas, but unless you’re serving a Tiki stick, I don’t see why you couldn’t.

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The photo here shows the drink made at Pagan Idol in San Francisco. They adopted the pineapple wedge with three-cherry filling that is used by Trader Vic’s today in Emeryville. Although it’s not traditional, who doesn’t love cherries and pineapple?

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