Episode 108: Best-Of—The Mai Tai Forever, With Jeff “Beachbum” Berry

[This episode originally debuted in July 2023.] Perhaps no 20th-century cocktail has resonated as strongly (or been misinterpreted as widely) as the Mai Tai. This episode considers the Mai Tai from every angle, with drinks historian, author, and bar owner Jeff “Beachbum” Berry (Latitude 29, New Orleans) delving into his first-hand research into the Mai Tai’s history and how it became an international sensation, and sharing his own approach to the drink, along with best practices for Mai Tai success.

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Paul Clarke

Hey, everybody. Paul Clarke here from Imbibe magazine. I’m taking a few weeks away. And while I’m away, I wanted to revisit a couple of past episodes of Radio Imbibe that have proved to be among the most popular in our four plus years of preparing this podcast. The following episode first ran in July of 2023 and quickly became a big favorite. Here’s that episode in its entirety, a deep dive into the story of the Mai Tai with my good friend Jeff Beachbum Berry, owner of Beachbum Berry’s Latitude 29 in New Orleans. 

[music]

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Radio Imbibe by Imbibe magazine. I’m Paul Clarke, Imbibe’s editor in chief.

And if you’re listening to this episode on the first day that it’s live and you happen to be in the United States, then happy Independence Day. In the spirit of the holiday, this episode focuses on exactly what America needs right now: A Mai Tai for the 4th of July. 

The Mai Tai is a mainstay of the world of tropical drinks, and it’s been that way for most of the past century. Over those many years, however, the Mai Tai has gone in many, many directions, some of them natural evolutions of the drink based on the availability or lack thereof of one of its key ingredients. But some of the variations in the Mai Tai’s lifespan have more fully resembled zombie mutations, with drinks that have little to no resemblance to the original out wandering the cocktail landscape. 

To get to the bottom of the Mai Tai story and to dive deep into its history and its present, I’m chatting for this episode with my good friend Jeff Berry, better known in the bar world as Beachbum Berry. Jeff, or the Bum, as he’s known informally, is a longtime historian and author, researching everything related to the realms of tiki and tropical drinks, and the owner of Beachbum Berry’s Latitude 29 in New Orleans. He’s explored every corner of the Mai Tai story, and we’re going to share that with you today. So grab your cocktail shaker and a box of sparklers and pull up a lawn chair because this one’s going to be a lot of fun. 

[music]

Paul Clarke

Beachbum Berry, welcome to Radio Imbibe. 

Beachbum Berry 

Happy to be here. 

Paul Clarke 

You know, it’s always good to have you on the podcast. In the past, you’ve shared a cocktail with us during the long, dark summer of 2020 and more recently you joined us for a remembrance of our mutual friend, Brother Cleve. But today, we have something different in mind, a topic that I know is near and dear to your heart, and that’s the Mai Tai. I’m sure pretty much everyone who’s listened this far into the episode has at least a passing familiarity with the Mai Tai already. But for those whose explorations may still be somewhere in their early phases, how big of a freakin deal is the Mai Tai in the larger galaxy of rum cocktails and tropical cocktails? 

Beachbum Berry 

Well, it’s big in many ways. But I think the biggest way is it was the first, for want of a better word, tiki drinks, as we know. They did not call them that back in the day. They just call them exotic drinks or tropical cocktails. But it was the first drink to make the jump from tiki bars to bar bars, you know, to regular old restaurant bars and cocktail bars. It went viral in a way that no other tropical drink until the Piña Colada ever really did. The Zombie is was first famous tiki drink. But it never really penetrated in the way that the Mai Tai did. 

And I think there were a lot of reasons for that that had nothing to do with the drink. A lot of them had to do with cultural context and historical situations. I think without getting too deep down a rabbit hole, I mean, the fact that Hawaii became a state in 1959, by which time the Mai Tai had become sort of the unofficial drink of Hawaii, really helped it become a sort of a pan-bar sensation as opposed to just a tiki bar a tropical bar sensation.

The fact that it’s easy to make, whereas most tiki drinks, again, for want of a better word, are very difficult to make, with a lot of ingredients. Mai Tai only has like four ingredients. It has four or five if you put some sugar syrup in there. And yes, you shake it, you don’t have to flash blend it, which most of these other drinks you do. And the fact that it’s delicious when it’s made properly is another thing. 

But I think that’s the least important thing. I think even more than the taste is the time that it surfaced. It was just the right drink at the right time. It’s the right drink for the Kennedy era. It took over from the Eisenhower era’s Old Fashioned and Manhattans and all that. And it was a brighter, sunnier, you know, a brand new day kind of Camelot drink, if you will. It was very popular in Washington, D.C. at the time.

There was a headline of one of the Washington, D.C., columnists. I don’t know if it was for the Post or another newspaper, but the headline was “Don’t say black tie, say Mai Tai.” And it was all about how Mai Tais were being served at political parties on the Hill. The name, I think, is another reason why I’m more and more convinced, I think a lot of the reasons why drinks become famous, go viral, become classics, is the name. The name just strikes a chord. And that name, the Mai Tai, it rhymes. It flows off the tongue. It’s connotes a tropical vacation. There’s something exotic about it, something, you know, sort of flowery. It’s just a great name for the idea what it means, you know, It’s just a good name. You know. 

Paul Clarke

It’s fun to say and it’s fun to drink. 

Beachbum Berry 

There you go. Yeah. 

Paul Clarke

And you know, you mentioned the Kennedy era, but from what I recall, I think Richard Nixon was also a fan of the Mai Tai, if I’m remembering correctly. 

Beachbum Berry 

Richard Nixon was a Navy Grog man.

Paul Clarke

Navy Grog man. Okay, I stand corrected. 

Beachbum Berry

We don’t advertise that on the menu at Latitude. We say Sinatra’s favorite drink, although he’s problematic, too, now. 

Paul Clarke

You were in touch with one of our editors, Katrina Yentch, for an overview of the Mai Tai’s history for our brand-new July/August issue. And I’ve seen you do your presentation a number of times now at various events over the years, navigating the questions about the true origins of the drink, whether it was from Vic Bergeron, who came up with it at Trader Vic’s in the story we all learned in Cocktail Primary School, or if the Mai Tai actually had its origins with Donn Beach for Don the Beachcomber. Without asking you to go through that full presentation, what did your research determine regarding the Mai Tai’s origin story? 

Beachbum Berry

Well, I was lucky enough to be able to contact and question some of the people who actually knew Donn Beach and Trader Vic and got their versions of the story. So I’ll just relay what they told me instead of going into a whole big prove this don’t prove that that kind of Perry Mason court case. 

So the first thing that started me off on wondering what the hell was going on with the Mai Tai was when Phoebe Beach put out her book of Donn Beach’s drinks in remembrance of him. That was his widow, his last, his third and last wife. She put out a book in like 2001, something like that. And she said that Trader Vic didn’t invent the Mai Tai, that he stole it from Don the Beachcomber, who invented it in 1933 when he opened his bar the day after Prohibition ended. And that didn’t quite gel with Trader Vic’s story in his 1970s autobiography when he said, and again, cocktail kindergarten, I’m going to go through it very quickly for context.

He claimed in this three-page story that the history of the Mai Tai that he and his bartender, whose name was Frank Polk. He didn’t bother to name the name, but it’s Frank Polk, were behind this bar in Oakland and Trader Vic said in one of the phoniest bits of dialogue ever put into a book, “We’re going to make the best rum drink ever made” or something like that. And they set about doing it and it took all day. By the end of the day, he and Frank Polk came up with a drink they liked.

Then a lady named Carey Gild, who lived in Tahiti with her husband, Ham, came into the bar. They tried the drink and she said, Mai Tai. Which means “out of this world, the best” in Tahitian Mai Tai means the best. Now we’re saying it wrong. By the way, Mai Tai, it’s Mai Tai, but never mind. A Tahitian told me that, and boy, was my face red. 

Paul Clarke 

Oops. 

Beachbum Berry

So that’s the story. And that was passed down into cocktail legend. And then this book comes out by Phoebe. She says, No, no, Donn Beach invented this drink. That sent me down the research rabbit hole. I looked at all the menus that I had from Don the Beachcombers, and none of them had a Mai Tai before the Kennedy era.

A Mai Tai appeared on Donn Beach’s menus in the 60s. You could tell by the pricing and sometimes it was a date on the menu. But prior to that, no. So if you invented it in the ’30s, why wasn’t it on any of his menus? Or if it wasn’t on the menu, Vic couldn’t steal it basically because it couldn’t have tasted at a Don’s. The 1937 menu does not have a Mai Tai on it, Don’s Mai Tai. That’s the year that Vic went down to Hollywood and went to Don the Beachcomber’s for a week and sat there and learned what he could learn. So then I questioned Phoebe about that, and she hasn’t talked to me since. 

I struck a nerve. She clarified, and she said, Well, it wasn’t one of Donn’s favorite drinks. And it was actually called the Mai Tai Swizzle. He could very easily have cut it from his menu early on. And now far be it for me to dismiss what Donn Beach’s widow said. I never even met the guy. You know, I wasn’t married to him.

So let’s take her word that Donn Beach had a Mai Tai Swizzle in 1933. And let’s take Vic’s word, because I talked to his one of his executives, Fred Fung, who worked with Vic for many, many years in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s. And Fred Fung told me that, yeah, Trader Vic went down to Don the Beachcombers in the ’30s and he did copy the décor, he copied the idea. But the Mai Tai was his own drink, and he really did invent it.

So here’s the two sides. What do we divine from this? Well, Donn Beach had lived in Tahiti. He actually had literally been a beachcomber in Tahiti. He would have heard that phrase Mai Tai. It’s entirely within the realm of possibility that he named the drink Mai tai. Trader Vic, you know, 10 years later or so is visited by a woman from Tahiti. She calls it the same thing.

I think it could just be a sitcom style mix up, you know? Well, yeah, he invented a drink called the Mai Tai, but nobody ever tasted it. And Vic comes up with one independently of Donn and it calls it the Mai Tai. So there’s a little bit of like, you know, I Love Lucy classic sitcom confusion. This was all Act One.

Act Two was when I interviewed a sculptor who used to be Donn Beach’s main Tiki carver and designer in Hawaii in the 1950s. An artist named Mick Brownlee. And Mick Brownlee told me that after they would be working at the restaurant after it closed and the chairs were up, that Don would have a drink and Mick would have a drink. By the way, because this is a cocktail podcast, I will tell you that Mick drank Martinique rum and Donn drank, you ready for this? Jack Daniel’s. 

Paul Clarke

I was not ready for this.

Beachbum Berry 

You were not expecting that. I wasn’t either when he told me that. But but there was more. He said that Donn would just tell them stories about the past. And he had a particular hair up his nose about Vic because he always thought that Vic was like just a copycat. And it irked him that Vic was becoming more famous than him because of the Mai Tai, when Donn had invented the entire category of drinks here. But what he told Mick and what Mick relayed to me was that Donn never told him that Vic stole the Mai Tai.

The story Donn told was that Vic tried a drink called the QB Cooler at Don the Beachcomber’s in 1937, and he really liked that drink. And that’s the drink he stole and called it the Mai Tai. Later on, I interviewed a journalist named Rick Carroll, who used to cover the Hawaii beat for the Star Advertiser in the ’70s and ’80s. He said Donn was a constant pain in the ass because Donn would constantly be calling up saying, “You have to come over to my restaurant. I want to tell you the story about how I invented the Mai Tai.” And he told them the same QB Cooler story. So that’s two sources confirming that. Now that led me to the QB cooler. 

And when I finally got a hold of the recipe, the original recipe was, by the way, had no passion fruit in it, which has been reported these days. Later recipes did. But the 1937 recipe did not have passion fruit. But it did have orange juice, lime, a bunch of different rums. It was just usual falernum, among his usual complicated eight-, nine-ingredient drink that you flash blend with crushed ice. So I tried one of those and it tasted a little bit like a Mai Tai. You could see how Vic might have been inspired by that. Perhaps five years, six years after tasting the QB, he was in his bar trying to come up with a drink. And maybe that was his jumping off point.

Nobody creates anything out of thin air. You know, there’s always a template that you go by, so maybe he was trying to recreate that flavor. Now, in the process, he came up with a drink that, as you say in the magazine this month, has absolutely nothing in common ingredient wise, with a QB Cooler at all. Vic’s drink may be redolent of the QB Cooler. And when we did taste, you mentioned that session I do about the Mai Tai, the 90-minute long session. At the end of the session we have the audience try a QB and try a Mai Tai and say, Do you think that it’s the same drink? And most people don’t. But I think that there is a similarity.

Anyway, there’s nothing in common with those two drinks except rum and lime juice. All the other ingredients are different and not even the same rums, very different rum. So I think you have to give it to Vic. I think Vic invented a Mai Tai that became THE Mai Tai, you know, over Donn’s. It’s a tangled web. And this is just the only version I have based on the people I’ve talked to and the things that are on the written record. So it could be dead wrong, I don’t know. But it’s, I think it’s kind of interesting that the feud over this lasted until both men were dead.

Vic was insistent that he created the Mai Tai. He called his Trader Vic’s restaurants, the home of the Mai Tai. In all the cookbooks and memoirs he wrote, he said, “I invented the Mai Tai. Anybody who says I didn’t invent this drink is a dirty stinker.” I guarantee you that’s not what he actually said, he had a very foul mouth. And Donn was constantly badgering the press saying, “No, no, look, look, it was me. I did it.” So that’s how important that drink was. That drink meant not only bragging rights, but it meant money as market share. If you can say you were the home of the Mai Tai, if you want the real thing, you have to come to my restaurant. I mean, that was a big deal back in the ’60s. 

Paul Clarke 

Right? Right now, as this whole cocktail renaissance thing has gone on over the past couple of decades, one recurring question that so many bartenders and writers and historians bring up regarding pretty much any classic cocktail is what did that original version taste like and how can we make it as true to form today. For drinks like the Martini? That’s easy. Gin, vermouth. Boom, You’re there. The Manhattan was a little trickier early on because rye whiskey had kind of retreated from the field of play for a long time. But eventually we got there. For the Mai Tai, though, we hit a speed bump right away. And that’s regarding the rum. What’s to keep your average Mai Tai-loving listener from just heading to their liquor cabinet and putting together a true, true original version right now?

Beachbum Berry

Well, the drink that Vic originally did called for as, again cocktail kindergarten, Wray and Nephew 17 year Jamaica. I’ve never tried that, but I have tried the Wray & Nephew 15 vintage bottle and it was pretty magnificent. And it was also a higher proof. I mean, it was at least 97-98 proof. Wray and Nephew 18 year, which I saw an ad for in an old magazine, was about 108 proof. So the reason we can’t make a Mai Tai today that tastes like what Vic was doing and the reason why most Mai Tais are too sweet, by the way, is because most rums today are 40. Maybe they’re 80 proof, they’re not strong enough. 

Vic went into detail in his memoir about what he was trying to do with the drink. He was trying to do a drink that enhanced this magnificent rum that ran up to 17 and didn’t overpower it with other ingredients. But just everything else just sort of supported it. And 80 proof rums just I mean, 80 proof Jamaican rums now, there’s nothing to compare to something that was back in the day 97.

Now, one reason why it’s difficult to recreate vintage rum drinks as opposed to vintage gin or whiskey drinks is because, you know, you can always get a barrel-proof whiskey. You can always get a navy-strength gin. Most gins are 90, 90 something proof, so you’re going to get something in the ballpark. But rums now, they’re too weak. They’re all too weak. They’re all coming in at 80 proof. The reason, I believe, is just economics. The taxes are lower, the lower the proof. Import and export taxes and excise taxes. So distilleries just water them down. That kills these drinks because these drinks with their heavy syrups and fruit juices and all that, you need a really strong, dense, fat rum to stand up to all that and to make it a rum drink as opposed to a fruit drink.

The Mai Tai with a 97 proof Jamaican rum, assuming you could find one, is going to taste much more like Vic’s Mai Tai than today’s rums would. Interestingly, most Jamaican rums in the United States up to about the 1960s were 97 proof minimum. Some of them were higher, all of the Wray & Nephew Dagger rums were or were around that proof. There was an Appleton punch rum a little later that was 90 proof. Myers rum was 97 proof when Fred Myers ran the company.

You try a Planter’s Punch with a 97 proof Jamaican rum as opposed to an 80 proof, and you’ll see why that was a popular drink. That’s one reason. One reason is ABV and the other is is not just ABV. But there are rums now that are higher proof Jamaican rums, but they’re not dark, heavy punch rums, which the Wray & Nephew 17 was. 

Paul Clarke

You can’t just swap in like Smith and Cross, you’re not getting the same kind of thing. 

Beachbum Berry

Yeah, a Smith and Cross is going to give you a more caramel taste, which is not quite what you want in a Mai Tai. What Vic did over the years, he had the same problem that we’re all going through now with the supply chain shortages where we can’t get the expressions we want and we have to mix and match to create that flavor just to serve the kind of drink we were serving before the plague.

So Vic ran out of the 17 year by the mid-1950s. He used Wray & Nephew 15, which I have tasted in which I can tell you, would make a magnificent Mai Tai. He ran out of that, was running out of it. So he started cutting it with Red Heart, another Jamaican punch rum. Eventually he ran out of the 15 years. So he would take the Red Heart and he would mix that with another dark Jamaican. I don’t know whether it was Myers or I don’t remember what the name was. But then he was missing a certain what he called nutty kind of note in the Jamaican rum. So he started mixing a Martinique rum in there.

And I first started drinking Mai Tais at Trader Vic’s in the ’80s when Vic was still alive, so toward the beginning of my Mai Tai drinking experience was the end of the real Mai Tai, as Vic insisted it be served and what I was drinking because I saw the rums behind the bar. I didn’t know a whole lot about rums, but I could recognize Myers. So the mix was an ounce each of Myers and Saint James Martinique Agricole rum, not hors d’age, but Royal Amber, I believe. Distinctive because that’s probably the only Martinique rum you could get back then in Los Angeles. That makes a great Mai Tai, really good Mai Tai. That’s what he was doing at that time. 

Gradually, things changed. I don’t know what they’re using now, but I don’t think they’re using that combination anymore. It’s a combination I use. I, I like to use a good dense, high ester molasses dark Jamaican rum, not a gold. There are some magnificent gold Jamaican rums out there like Worthy Park and Hampden Estate, but they just don’t have the density that you want, the molasses-eyness.

And I use an ounce of that and then I use the best Martinique agricole I can find, aged, the whites no good, the white tastes more like agave or tequila in that drink. The more age on it, the better. Like a Neisson Eleve Sous Bois or Clement VSOP, like that. And it’s an expensive drink. I mean, the pour cost of that drink is higher than any other drink on our menu. But that’s the drink that tiki people are going to judge us on. So it’s like we’re robbing Peter to pay Paul on that one. You know, I always said that the cocktail people and the rum people are going to judge us on our Daiquiri. And the tiki people will judge us on our Mai Tai. So those are the two drinks we spent the longest spec-ing out. 

Paul Clarke

Right. Right. And that kind of match up between an aged Jamaican rum, a richer aged Jamaican rum and an aged Martinique rum, that has been kind of the work around, if you will, that Vic had been doing from early on. And assuming someone hasn’t been sitting on a bottle of this Wray & Nephew 17 year old for all this time, and that they didn’t pick up one of the incredibly limited edition recently released bottlings from Appleton Estate of a 17 year, which is gone. It’s all gone. Assuming they don’t have those, then this kind of match up between the Jamaican and the Martinique, that’s still kind of the way to go, right? 

Beachbum Berry

I think so. But you’re still dealing more or less with a 40 ABV combination. So we do put a little topspin on it and we do add a little bit more of an extra rum, which I’m not at liberty to discuss because we needed to boost the ABV on it just to make it more of a rum drink and less of a fruity tropical cocktail.

Paul Clarke

So we’ve navigated for a long time using this kind of workaround of Jamaican rum and aged Martinique rum. When you think of the flavor wise, how close is that to kind of the original intent, or is it just something that we’re making ourselves feel better by drinking something what’s still a very good rum and a very good cocktail? 

Beachbum Berry

That’s a great question. I only have some small bits of evidence to make me think that maybe it’s close to what Vic was doing. First of all, it was what Vic was doing. And when he died in, what, ’84, ’86, something like that, in his restaurants toward the end when he could get an agricole rum. The case has been made that the original agricole that he would have used in the ’50s would have been a grand arome or a molasses based Martinique rum, because they didn’t have agricole being imported then. Be that as it may when it wasn’t available, that’s what Vic opted for. So that’s what I’m going with.

But the only shred of evidence that makes me think that this is close to what Vic wanted was that Trader Vic marketed a Mai Tai rum from the 1960s through the ’80s, and up until the ’90s, you could still get it in grocery stores. And the thing about this rum was it was freaking delicious. I mean, it was great. I used to drink it just on its own with some ice. It was really, really a great combination. And it’s very close to the combination of an agricole and a dark Jamaican.

On the bottle, it said rums from Jamaica, Martinique and St Croix or Virgin Islands or something like that. So he was doing some kind of a mix to approximate what he wanted that involved other rums than Jamaican and Martinique. But it was fantastic and it made a really wonderful Mai Tai, and it’s not that far off from that combination that we’re using now. 

Paul Clarke 

Now, you know, the discussions over the construction of a cocktail have truly hit it big when you see them become memes and pieces of merchandise. And I’m thinking of the magnificent Instagram feed from Mover and Shaker and it’s recurring, willing to talk Mai Tai specs. 

Aside from the rum question, let’s look at the other components. Lime juice. That’s easy. It’s a lime. Curacao. That’s pretty easy. Pick up a decent brand. Orgeat? Today, still pretty easy to get a quality version. Are there things to consider with each of these ingredients, for those playing along at home? 

Beachbum Berry

Yes. The maddening thing about Trader Vic’s recipe is that he specifies the juice of one lime. What the hell is that? You know, I mean, my first, the first little booklet I put out of recipes, the Mai Tai called for two ounces of lime juice because I was getting these monster tennis ball sized limes at the grocery store. You know, that’s what Ralph’s had. And I would squeeze the juice of a lime and it’s just like that. That’s I thought, Well, that must be it. And then gradually it was, what am I trying to do, give people ulcers, you know? If I cut it down to one and a half, it was that, what is it using now?

I started paying attention when I went to Trader Vic’s, and Vic’s had this really interesting lime squeezer that looked almost like an ice cream scoop in that it had two long handles, and you squeeze them together with your fist and there was a metal band that closed around the lime. The half lime, you cut the lime in half, close the metal band around the diameter, and then they would squeeze. That doesn’t give you a whole lot of lime juice.

Vic’s Mai Tai could have anywhere from a half an ounce to three-quarters of an ounce of lime in it. Maybe Vic had a sweeter tooth than we think. I don’t. I like a tart drink, so I just say, juice of a lime is an ounce. A decent-sized Persian or Mexican lime will will yield an ounce. And I’m that’s the one thing that I was comfortable with after trying, I never went down to a half because that’s like, you know, toothache stuff. But I tried three-quarter didn’t quite work for me. It works for a lot of people who just don’t like a tart drink and I just ended up with one. But that’s an there’s a variable right there. In addition to your rum blend, that’s a variable.

To go back to rums for a little bit, a cocktail blogger, the Rum Dood cocktail blog. You know Rum Dood, he did a Mai Tai rum comparison test where he made like 50 Mai Tais with different rum combinations to find out which one he liked best. And I think he ended up with demerara rum and Jamaican rum and something else in there. But it was like total mad scientist stuff. And I’ve talked to people who do like eight different rums in a Mai Tai, to which I say, More power to you. You know, that’s awesome. If you if, if you’re creating, it’s just Donn Beach alchemy is the same thing he used to do, you know, put three rums in a drink and put four rums in a drink. So why not? Why not do that? 

Paul Clarke 

Hey, you’re a blender. 

Beachbum Berry 

Yeah, well, we’ve all had to become blenders now. I mean, most tiki bar owners are now, like it or not, they have to be blenders because you can’t get the product you want. We couldn’t get dark Jamaican rum, just plain old, regular, old, dark Jamaican rum. We couldn’t get any brand out there, even Myers for a while. And fortunately, we have a general manager, Jeff Schwartz, who’s like kind of a wizard and he did like an eight-rum blend to create, to recreate the taste of a basic Jamaican punch rum, not using barely any Jamaican rum at all, you know, I think he used the gold.

If I wanted to, I couldn’t tell you what he did. I mean, it’s just like, you know, a laundry list of stuff at different proportions. But people I’ve talked to, people across the country, and they’re all having the same new job thrust upon them. 

Paul Clarke 

And you know, one thing, when we went through that list of ingredients, we did not mention simple syrup or rock candy syrup, which has been a part of the Mai Tai story for years. Why not? 

Beachbum Berry

That’s an interesting element there. Why didn’t he just use orgeat as a sweetener? Why simple? Well, obviously he wanted to have just a hint of almond taste. In fact, his menu, he was very good at menu descriptions. I mean, I wish I had his poetic skills. He listed the ingredients and then he said, plus a whisper of almond. So a whisper of almond. So originally he called for a half an ounce of orgeat and a quarter ounce of simple. That was when he was using 108 or 118 or whatever the hell Wray & Nephew 17 was, which was a really strong rum. So you needed that extra sweetness to balance it.

Later, as he was using different rums with lower ABV, he cut that down to a quarter ounce orgeat and a quarter ounce simple and that’s, those were like the 1950s sixties version. I myself think that the one distinctive thing about the Mai tai that makes it different from a rum daisy or just a typical rum sours is the almond, that’s the one genius touch. So I just use orgeat. It’s like depending on the brix of the orgeat like how sweet it is and how strong it is either a half or three quarters of an ounce and no, why bother with simple. 

Paul Clarke

Right, right. And okay, so all of this conversation has been based upon what we as cocktail nerds think of as the Mai Tai, but not everybody thinks about the Mai Tai as an according to Hoyle cocktail nerd does. And that’s where life sometimes gets interesting and sometimes get sad. Let’s play sad clown first. How did the Mai Tai fall down this hole where it became basically anything mixed with rum, with pineapple juice, grenadine, so on, you name it. 

Beachbum Berry 

I think the same way that the Singapore Sling and the Zombie were both tortured to death after they became popular. And that’s because the original recipes were expensive to make. They were pain in the ass to make. And also not a lot of people knew how to make them. These were trade secrets—well, the Singapore Sling wasn’t—but the Zombie and all these tiki drinks, including the Mai Tai, Vic never revealed what was in his Mai Tai until 1971 when he was already ready to cash in his chips.

So first of all, nobody can get their hands on the real recipe. So they would just, and the Mai Tai was a popular drink, everybody wanted one, so they just make shit up. Okay, I’ll put some rum and pineapple juice and maybe some sweet and sour in there because we don’t use fresh lime because that’s too expensive. And who wants to mess with that? 

If I had to do some guessing about the really long, twisted minefield path that the Mai Tai went down since its original version, I would say that probably the first corruption of the Mai Tai happened in Hawaii, where the drink first became popular. Like Vic says, he invented the Mai Tai in ’44 and indeed it was on his menu at around that time. But nobody wrote about it. Nobody said anything about it. It did not go viral for a long time. It didn’t get written about. Nobody says anything about it until about 1953. And those people are travel writers and they’re writing about Hawaii and they talk about this drink, the Mai Tai.

Vic was contracted by the Matsen cruise ship line to, you know, to sort of like tiki up their drink menu. And Matsen also owned the Royal Hawaiian Hotel and the Moana and a bunch of other big resorts on Waikiki. So they wanted people to go from the massive cruise ship to a Matsen hotel. And they had the same Trader Vic recipes in those hotels. And that’s where the drink caught on and became big and people started serving it at luaus, everybody wanted a Mai Tai. Again, not too many people knew exactly what was in it, but they could guess. I mean, most Mai Tais ended up with orgeat because obviously there’s some kind of almond flavor in there. Some people used amaretto, which was just like, gag me with a spoon, you know? But there was, it had an almond taste, so we’ll use that.

I think the pineapple juice corruption started in Hawaii because everybody expects to drink pineapple juice in Hawaii because pineapples are a cash crop in Hawaii. And Dole made a big deal about Hawaiian pineapple juice, the Dole pineapple company. Anybody from a certain era remembers the ad campaign, the pineapples growing in the sun, little song or whatever. So people went to Hawaii expecting pineapple juice and in the true spirit of Hawaiian hospitality, Okay, you want pineapple juice? We’ll give you a pineapple juice. We’ll put it in this drink, so you’ll shut up about it. So pineapple goes into a Mai Tai, then I think this happened stateside. It could have happened in Hawaii, but I don’t see why they would have bothered because nobody was asking for grenadine in Hawaii.

But for some reason, the Mai Tai started getting red in the States and I if I had to guess and we can only guess because nobody’s around to tell us why, orgeat as a sweetener, do we really have to buy that? We already have grenadine. It’s a sweetener. Let’s just put that in there, you know? So all of a sudden, grenadine takes the place of orgeat in a mai tai, which and also, to add insult to injury, it’s already got pineapple juice in it, too. So you have this drink with pineapple juice, grenadine.

Paul Clarke

Why quibble anymore.

Beachbum Berry

Yeah, right. And the rum was probably Bacardi or whatever it was in the well. This is why we’re not going to go in any trouble to make this drink the way that Trader Vic did and the way that certain Polynesian-themed bars took it seriously. Also, I think when it became the luau drink in Hawaii, where you’re serving maybe 300 or 400 people at a time in the big hotels, you’re not going to make a real Mai Tai, you’re just going to make a just a big pineapple juice, Whalers rum, sweet and sour. And people will be happy, you know? That’s that was probably what really started the whole thing off. 

Paul Clarke

Now, if we’re talking about biology among higher life forms, then evolution typically takes tens or hundreds of thousands or even millions of years to create new species and genetically distinct family lines. Cocktails though are more like fruit flies. You know, you take a long enough nap and there’s a whole other kind of genetic line up that’s out there. As the Mai Tai morphed into these different versions, for example, with the Hawaiian Mai Tai, have these become recognizably distinct descendants of the original or are they more like mutant zombies out there stalking the landscape? 

Beachbum Berry 

As much as I like that image of mutant zombies, I think that, yeah, I think what happened was the Mai Tai evolved from a drink into a drink category. Mai Tai, oh, we have a we have a, we have a Mai Tai on our menu. We have a tropical drink, we’ll just put whatever in it. It’s, a rum drink is sweet. You know, If you’re lucky, you’ll get citrus in there.

You know, I think that’s, I think I was worried when we opened up Latitude 29. I was really worried because we’re New Orleans, as you know, as a tourist town. And you get tourists and you get a lot of tourists from states that haven’t really evolved a cocktail scene and people driving in their big pickup trucks and asking for them. And if they ordered a Mai Tai at our place, I was worried that they were going to say, why isn’t this red? Where’s the pineapple juice? And I know that other bars already have like what they call a Hawaiian-style Mai Tai on their menu, and then they then they specified Trader Vic’s Mai Tai as well.

So have two Mai Tais on there. And I didn’t want to do that. So I just crossed my fingers and hope for the best and I don’t think anybody’s actually asked that. The other thing I was worried about was people coming in from Florida asking for Bushwhackers, and that never happened either. So I guess we’re living a charmed life over there in the Quarter. 

Paul Clarke

Okay, so happy clown time. Are there variations on the Mai Tai that are worthy of our attention and praise? And I’ll get us started: the Tai du Mai from Eric Hakkinen from Roquette here in Seattle where he splits the base with cognac and high-proof Jamaican rum and adds a little bit of pineapple syrup in there. And then there’s the Tia Mia from Ivy Mix, which splits the base between rum and mezcal. Are there other versions that you found agreeable and you think, Yeah, you know, sure, Mai Tai category, that’s not a bad thing?

Beachbum Berry 

Yeah, why not? I mean, the whole thing is that Vic and Donn took templates from the Caribbean sometimes, like the Planter’s Punch was hundreds of years old. Rum, lime, and sugar, and the Caribbean template was rum, lime, and sugar. And the only thing that made the drinks different was what island you were in. I mean, if it was Jamaica, it was Jamaican rum. And a Planter’s Punch. If you’re in Cuba, it was Cuban rum as a Daiquiri. If you were in Trinidad, it was Trinidad rum and it was a swizzle.

So Donn and Vic took that and they dimensionalized it and they brought it into the mid-20th century and they incorporate new ingredients and techniques. And I think they would both be whether they’re above or below, who knows? I think they would be looking up or down going, yeah, go for it. You know, just do that. Vic split his bases all the time. Vic had you have the Scorpion is split between rum and cognac. So he was already doing that. Fog Cutter is even more intense. It’s like gin, cognac, and rum. And just to, just to show off or, you know, float of sherry there. It all works. You know, it was thought through. It wasn’t just a random Long Island Iced Tea kind of thing.

So yeah, I applaud all that stuff, all that innovation. I know people are using, I don’t like the fact that they’re calling them orgeats, but they’re using like sesame orgeat or avocado pit orgeat and they’re using different nut based sweeteners, which I think is cool. But technically they’re not orgeat, which is almond. But yeah, go for it. Just do it. 

Paul Clarke

Right. Excellent. So as we head toward the exit here, in your many years of making and consuming and researching and writing and talking about the Mai Tai, are there certain best practices that bartenders and home enthusiasts should keep in mind for mastering the Mai Tai or other parting thoughts you want to share? 

Beachbum Berry 

Yeah, I think we could all learn a lot about really unpacking the DNA of the drink and recombining it into your best version. The one that I mean, if you like it, that’s the best version of the drink. The one you serve at your home bar or your bar bar or whatever. If you like it, if that’s your favorite version of the Mai Tai, that’s the one you should serve people because it’s your reflection of the drink.

I think we go back to what Rum Dood did. I mean, not everybody has the money or the wherewithal to buy 40 different rums and try every different combination, but try your favorite rums that are in the ballpark of what originally was prescribed. Maybe you’re not using dark Jamaican punch rum, but maybe you’re using a dark demerara rum that has still an English style rum just with a little bit more woodiness and char to it. You know, there’s rums from Central America that fill that bill. Try using those and try cutting them with all kinds of different rums. And why stop at Martinique? You could go Guadeloupe, you can go.

I mean, now you could go Mauritius that wasn’t available to Vic back then. The rums from Mauritius. There’s like Ian Burrell‘s rum, Equiano, probably would be an interesting thing to combine. There’s rums from Central American, rums from Mexico now, which we didn’t have before, as rums from Australia coming out. 

Paul Clarke

There are fun rums from Hawaii coming out that that are actually like interesting rums and fun to mix with. 

Beachbum Berry

You just nailed something there, Paul, because most of those rums are sugarcane rums, most of those rums are Hawaiian versions of an agricole. And some of them, like Kuleana, their aged rum is fantastic. You know, Kō Hana and Kuleana, I don’t remember what I like better, but one of those makes a magnificent aged variation around which would be great in a Mai Tai. 

Paul Clarke

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. We had Kuleana, we had written about them in our Imbibe 75 earlier this year. Some fascinating stuff coming out of Hawaii. 

Beachbum Berry

All the heritage cane they’re using. But the short answer to your question is I would I would do that as far as best practices. Just whatever new stuff you really like that fills maybe fills that taste profile, bill, just try it out because. 

Paul Clarke 

Make it a summer project. This is your goal by Labor Day. Land on your house special for your house Mai Tai. 

Beachbum Berry 

Right. Because there’s because Vic unfortunately left us with this dilemma. You know, he said juice of a lime, that leaves plenty of room for experimentation, and he used a rum that’s extinct. Or you have to pay thousands of dollars for an NFT to get it at all. So we have, we’re on our own and we have to make a drink that tastes good to us because we don’t know what the drink that tasted great to Vic was. I mean, the one I drank in the ’80s was obviously what Vic was doing then, but was it as good as what he originally did? Yeah.

Paul Clarke 

Well, Jeff, it’s wonderful, as always, to chat with you, my friend. And I look forward to seeing you very soon at Tales of the Cocktail. 

Beachbum Berry 

Now I want a Mai Tai. 

[music]

Paul Clarke 

Head to beachbumberry.com to find out more about Jeff Berry, his books, the rum blends he’s worked up for Hamilton Rums, and the barware lines he’s developed in partnership with Cocktail Kingdom. And if you’re ever in the French Quarter in New Orleans, you can try that perfected formula for the Mai Tai he mentioned at his bar, Beachbum Berry’s Latitude 29. Head to latitude29nola.com to find out more. 

Have we got a Mai Tai recipe for you on our website at imbibemagazine.com? Of course we do. Along with recipes for Mai Tai relatives and variations big and small and plenty of other stories and recipes. We’ve also got the full online archive of Radio Imbibe podcast episodes for you to listen to. Be sure to subscribe to Radio Imbibe to keep up with future episodes. Check us out on Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook if you haven’t already. And if you’re not a subscriber to the print and or digital issues of Imbibe, then let us help you out with that. Just follow the link in this episode’s notes and we’ll be happy to hook you up.

I’m Paul Clarke. This is Radio Imbibe. Happy Fourth, everybody. Catch you next time.