This Mai Tai riff will get its advanced flavors from a base of mezcal espadín and funky Jamaican rum. Blended with orange curaçao, orgeat, and recent lime juice, the Tia Mia is shiny and balanced—a sublime antidote to the unsuccessful Mai Tai riffs that proliferate worldwide. (There are total Reddit threads devoted to Mai Tai fails.)
Whereas the unique Mai Tai dates to the mid-Twentieth century, the Tia Mia is a newer entrant to the tropical cocktail canon. In 2010, the influential bartender and enterprise proprietor Julie Reiner opened the Hawaiian-themed restaurant and bar, Lani Kai, in New York Metropolis. Bartender Ivy Combine created the Tia Mia—an anagram of Mai Tai—for the drinks checklist, marking her debut recipe on considered one of Reiner’s menus. Lani Kai closed after a two-year run, however the cocktail remained a neighborhood favourite. When Reiner and Combine partnered on Leyenda, a now-shuttered, James Beard Award-nominated Brooklyn bar that specialised in agave spirits, the Tia Mia was a menu staple. The cocktail can also be featured in Combine’s award-winning e-book, Spirits of Latin America.
To create the Tia Mia, Combine first tried floating an oz. of mezcal on high of the cocktail—a nod to the darkish rum used within the conventional serve. Finally, nevertheless, she integrated mezcal espadín, a extensively obtainable fashion ceaselessly utilized in cocktails, instantly into the construct. Funky, earthy Jamaican rum contains the opposite half of the bottom and retains the flavors balanced. The remaining elements hew to conventional Mai Tai recipes, albeit with modified proportions.
Like many tropical drinks, the Tia Mia options orange curaçao, a sort of orange liqueur produced from dried orange peels. Many common manufacturers additionally incorporate dried herbs, giving them extra nuanced flavors than the brilliant citrus notes of many business triple secs. The Tia Mia makes use of much less curaçao than known as for within the traditional Mai Tai, giving the drink much less perceived sweetness and permitting the spirits to shine.
The outcomes are drier and extra advanced than many tropical cocktail riffs. Better of all, the Tia Mia recipe is simple sufficient to attraction to skilled and residential bartenders alike.
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1 ounce mezcal espadín
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1 ounce Jamaican rum
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1/2 ounce orange curaçao
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½ ounce orgeat
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3/4 ounce recent lime juice
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Garnish: mint sprig
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Garnish: lime wheel
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Garnish: edible orchid (elective)
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Add all elements right into a shaker with ice and shake till nicely chilled.
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Pressure into a big rocks glass over crushed or pebbled ice.
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Garnish with lime wheel, mint sprig and orchid (elective).
What Is In a Conventional Mai Tai?
The Mai Tai would be the most well-known cocktail with origins within the Tiki canon—and likewise probably the most maligned. Interpretations embrace quite a lot of juices and syrups that by no means existed within the authentic recipe, however we are able to’t blame anybody for these artistic foibles. The Mai Tai recipe was closely protected for practically 30 years by the would-be creator of the famed drink, Victor J. Bergeron Jr.—higher often known as Dealer Vic.
Bergeron claimed to have invented the drink at his California bar, Dealer Vic’s, within the Nineteen Forties however the recipe didn’t seem in a cocktail e-book till the Seventies. The unique Dealer Vic’s Mai Tai featured Jamaica’s J. Wray & Nephew rum, orange curacao, rock sweet syrup (a heavier, sweeter easy syrup), orgeat (almond) syrup, recent lime juice, and a sprig of mint.
What’s Orgeat?
Orgeat is a creamy, nutty syrup with advanced aromatics—and it’s a necessary ingredient in lots of topical drinks. The everyday orgeat recipe is made with almonds, sugar, orange blossom water, and a spirit, comparable to vodka or brandy, to fortify it. Orange blossom water could appear to be an esoteric, hard-to-find ingredient, however it’s simply accessible on-line and in lots of upscale meals markets and Center Japanese markets; it’s possible you’ll even be capable to get it within the worldwide aisle on the grocery store. You can too make your individual.