Many good recipes try to recreate that mix of funk and weight with a blend of some aged Martinique rum, for grassy character, and aged Jamaican Rum, for weighty funk.

Wray & Nephew 17 year Rum doesnвЂ™t exist any longer. Fortunately for all of us, the original recipe still stands, an older testament, to which true pilgrims can always return. It would be a decade later when Bergeron, hired to adapt his creation to the presumed sweet tooths of Waikiki tourists, created the orange/pineapple/grenadine/vanilla monstrosity you likely know. They took one sip and proclaimed вЂњMaitaвЂ™i roa aвЂ™e,вЂќ which means something like вЂњThe Best of All.вЂќ He shortened this to Mai Tai, and the cocktail was born. They asked him to make a drink out of a 17-year old bottle of Jamaican Rum, so he considered for a moment, added some lime juice, orgeat (almond syrup) and orange curaГ§ao, shook it up and gave it to them. The story goes like this: Victor Bergeron was running Trader Vics, a tiki bar in Oakland in 1944, when some Taihitian friends arrived. It was framed for these saccharine crimes, and I can prove it: the actual Mai Tai-the original, 1944 version-only has one fruit juice in it, and itвЂ™s lime. It is the unwilling liquid mascot of the most gallingly exploitative and commercial constructions of Oahu, and has come to represent what people think they donвЂ™t like about tropical drinks, which is to say, that a night of them should be garnished with a shot of insulin. Tequila and Mezcal Sales Are Now Outpacing Whiskey

Best Chefs of the Year: Genie Kwon and Tim Flores of ChicagoвЂ™s KasamaД«owmoreвЂ™s Latest 52-Year-Old Single Malt Comes in a Futuristic Decanter by Aston Martin

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