I remember my first Mai Tai quite vividly. Very young and in love. Staying at her grandmother’s pad in Fort Lauderdale. The grandma was not there, fortunately. After a little boat tour around the canals we took a nice stroll on the beach. Hey! A bar. Let’s go. Yeah, right there on the beach, a little cantina. We kicked our flip flops off, sat down on the wooden planked bench, bellied up, and I asked the guy to give me whatever was good. He dumped some various rums in one of those ridged, translucent plastic cups, added some Rose’s lime juice and what I will guess was grenadine and a squirt of some odd milky fluid. Ice went in, a radioactive looking maraschino cherry went on top alongside a lime and a good old fashioned plastic straw. He put in down in front of me and said Mai Tai.

Shall I wax poetic about sun and ocean breezes with bare feet in the sand while crushing rum with a beautiful girl in a bikini top and sarong? No, you know, well, I hope you know. The waves, the palms swaying, and for whatever reason the ability to drink several times more than normal but with no threat of a hangover. Yes, I have no idea why but rum on the beach only has one effect and that is a happy, happy place.

The rum trickles in. The sun shines, the waves beckon. Feet buried in the warm sand while alcohol takes over for a couple of hours. Easy laughs and a quick rub across the shoulders of coconut scented tanning lotion for protection. Vermont so far north, buried in snow and ice while the sun bludgeoned. And us, under the canopy side by side, arms touching atop the crude construction of the bar. One pale, cream colored, hairless, the other dark and furry like an ape. Afternoon naps and Florida coast nights where the breeze cooled it all down. Walks along the promenade whre all the other young ones strode hand in hand or congregated in large groups readying themselves for many beers long road ahead of them to calm and quench the swelter of the previous day’s sun. The waves, for whatever reason, louder, more violent at night. Awake, freshly showered, seeking vittles and more libations, the demon rum gone from the system but the thirst for it growing anew. Daiquiri, Mojito, another Mai Tai perhaps.

These were the Clinton years, my friends. A pre-cell phone, pre-social media utopia. No threat of anything on the horizon…Or so we thought…We were all living in that strange dream post 80s dream where we thought nothing bad could ever happen. Yeah, the rock n Roll was crap then but you could still have a shitty job in those days and pay your bills instead of having a good job and only paying your bills. Maybe I look back with fondness, as we all do, because through the mists of time it all seems to be rose colored. No? The bad times rarely peek through our nostalgic lens for whatever reason. Maybe our brains are designed to do this lest we be drowned in constant regret. At any rate, it was temporary. It all fell apart soon after when the 2000s slammed into us. It never really got any better for the middle class did it?

What is that milky substance you are putting in there? I asked the bartender. Orgeat, he replied. Hmm. Ok. What is that? Annoyed, he replied again, It’s almond syrup.

So that was the secret. For many days I wondered about this mysterious orgeat concoction and then promptly forgot until many years later until some other encounter with it or when my mind wandered to that little Florida vacation.

The Mai Tai came from Trader Vic’s circa 1960 a famous chain of tiki bars and restaurants created by Victor (Vic) Jules Bergeron, Jr. who is said to have invented the drink.

The original Trader Vic’s Mai Tai recipe.

2 oz. Wray and Nephew

.5 oz. Orange Curacao

.5 oz. Orgeat

.25 oz. Rock Candy Syrup

Juice of one lime

Some very obvious b problems with the above recipe. 1. Juice of one lime is inconsistent. Limes come in various sizes and will not always produce the same amount of juice when squeezed. 2. Too sweet. The average lime might yield an ounce of juice (That said, larger, riper limes can yield up to 1.5 oz. of juice and small, dry limes almost nothing at all). All things considered, this recipe, when calculating an ounce of fresh juice matches sweet and sour too evenly…75 oz. of syrup and .5 oz. of liqueur is too sweet in my opinion. I typically go with a 4:3 ratio (75% sweet) and with rum drinks a 3:2 ratio (66% sweet and coincidentally the Fibonacci Sequence of 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8…Which are daiquiri spec ratios of 2 oz. rum, .75 oz. fresh lime juice, and .5 oz. simple syrup…The 5 part is the 35-40% water dilution that comes when the drink is shaken with ice before straining).

Let us now visit Punch Drink for their supposed best Mai Tai recipe. From their article “In Search of the Ultimate Mai Tai” we receive the following recipe from Garret Richard formerly of Exotica in NYC and now the author of The Tropical Standard where he reinvents many old tiki cocktails with newer techniques and ingredients over at the bar, The Sunken Harbor Club in Brooklyn.

Garret Richards’s Mai Tai

• 5 drops saline (1:5, salt:water)
• 1 ounce lime juice (reserve 1 spent lime wedge)
• 3/4 ounce Latitude 29 Orgeat
• 1/4 ounce Grand Marnier
• 1/2 ounce Clément Créole Shrubb
• 3/4 ounce Coruba Dark Rum
• 1 1/2 ounces Denizen Merchant’s Reserve 8-Year Rum

Garnish: mint, orchid, lime twist.

Sounds, looks pretty good but to me still too sweet as it goes a little overboard on the syrups (1.125 oz. total with lime juice clocking in at 1 oz.). Anyway, what do I know? He’s famous in the bartending world and I am not.

But, but…There is a way to Rustic Canyonize the mai tai, no? Yes.

First off, something in season. Well, I found green almonds at the market the other day. Yup. We are also still in citrus season…But finally at the finish line. Whatever shall we do? Remember now, the tenets. 1. Something fresh 2. Something fermented 3. Something bound for the bin. Let’s go.

With the green almonds I made amazake. Which to me, is the best way to make any orgeat. Try it and you will be pleasently impressed with yourself. Yes, it does take about a week.

The curacao was made with old scraps of mandoquat we had hanging around soaking in 192 proof grain spirit. This was cut with simple syrup to 96 proof and then again with cara cara orange sherbet down to an easy 48 proof.

I followed the typical recipe we always use for calpico. We make loads of the stuff all the time. Really the best ingredient and easy to make. Try please. Quite rewarding.

Anyway, the name comes from the building down the street from me. An old art deco structure built in 1934 by the Tin Man, Jack Haley. JFK lived there for a minute too. Little slice of history on my block.

Mauretania

1 oz. Neisson’s Rhum Agricole

1 oz. Fresh Lime Juice

.5 oz. RC Mandoquat Scrap Curacao

.5 oz. RC Rum Blend (Hamilton Demerara, Planteray OFTD, Hamilton Pot Still Black)

.5 oz. Sort of Fermented Kumquat Vanilla Calpico

.5 oz. Green Almond Amazake Orgeat

.25 oz. RC Spiced Rum

Shake, strain, dash with Blango (1 part Blackstrap rum, 1 part Angostura Bitters)

If I had just called this a Mai Tai it would sell better. As of this moment it does not sell well at all but is exceptionally delicious.

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