Birth of a classic

In 1933, right after Prohibition ended, Ernest Beaumont Gantt opened Don's Beachcomber Café in Los Angeles. Patrons, many of them Hollywood stars, came to sip rum and fruit-based cocktails that dialed up the tropical mood, with names as unusual as they were enticing: Zombie, Cobra's Fang, and Three Dots and a Dash. Tiki cocktails had arrived.

In 1938, Victor Bergeron renamed his Oakland bar Trader Vic's. He earned the nickname “Trader Vic” by bartering for the constantly changing décor in his new island-themed bar, a vision inspired by his visit to Don the Beachcomber.

The Mai Tai itself appeared later. Trader Vic always maintained that he created the drink one evening in 1944 when a Tahitian couple, the Guilds, stopped by. While working on new tropical recipes inspired by the simplicity of classic cocktails, Trader Vic served his guests a mix of 100 percent pot-still Jamaican rum, lime juice, curaçao, orgeat syrup, and rock candy syrup. After her first sip, Carrie Guild exclaimed in Tahitian, “Maita’i roa!” (ie. “Out of this world, the best!”), and the cocktail had its name.

In 1953, Trader Vic was hired to create the bar program for two hotels on Waikiki Beach, Hawaii. The island was booming and would hit full-on craze in the early 60’s, a trend captured in the Elvis Presley film Blue Hawaii. The Mai Tai quickly became an island sensation; one journalist even wrote that the drink was “the main attraction for tourists.” With its runaway success, every bar in Hawaii began pouring Mai Tais to meet demand, and vacationers carried the recipe back to the mainland, making the Mai Tai the most popular tropical cocktail in the United States for more than a decade.

Just as the Mai Tai began to lose ground, thanks to its own popularity and too many poor variations, Ernest Beaumont Gantt (who had legally changed his name to Donn Beach) and Trader Vic settled their dispute over the drink’s authorship. In 1970 Victor Bergeron was officially recognized as the sole inventor of the Mai Tai.

History ultimately set the record straight for this delicious drink. The cocktail renaissance of the early 2000s and the meticulous research of Jeff Beachbum Berry (with books like Sippin' Safari and Intoxica!) restored the Mai Tai to its rightful place, even as the rivalry between the two California icons had long kept the original recipes under wraps.

Planteray Xaymaca Special Dry Rum and Ferrand Dry Curaçao: the key to a perfect Mai Tai

To honor Trader Vic’s recipe and elevate your Mai Tai, start with top-quality ingredients. Especially when it comes to rum. Our Planteray Xaymaca Special Dry Rum revives the 19th-century Jamaican 100 percent pot-still style, offering floral and fruity notes that showcase the legendary traditional “rum funk.” This blend, distilled in the Long Pond's John Dore and Clarendon's Vendome pot stills, is the ideal base for your cocktail.

Orange liqueur is often overlooked in a Mai Tai, yet it’s crucial to achieving Trader Vic’s original balance. Thanks to its “triple infusion” technique that layers delicious bitter-orange notes, Ferrand Dry Curaçao, the result of months of collaboration between our founder Alexandre Gabriel and David Wondrich, draws out every nuance of this legendary tropical drink.

Make the recipe below and you’ll be saying, “Maita’i roa, out of this world, the best!”

Xaymaca Mai Tai

Ingredients:

  • Planteray Xaymaca Special Dry Rum: 2 oz
  • Ferrand Dry Curaçao: 0.5 oz
  • Freshly squeezed lime juice: 1 oz
  • Orgeat: 0.5 oz
  • Simple syrup: 0.25 oz

Method:

  • Add ice and all ingredients to a shaker
  • Add a half of a lime hull to the shaker and shake vigorously
  • Strain into a double Old-Fashioned glass filled with crushed ice
  • Garnish with a spent lime half, round side up, and a generous sprig of mint, evoking a lone tree on a tiny remote island