As part of the silent auction component of the Oakhana Summer Swizzle / two home tiki bar crawl in August, one of the auction items I contributed was a private tasting event with three Mai Tais for up to 8 people and hosted by Jeff Hall at the Dragon’s Den in the Oakland hills. Nav Singh was the high bidder and we had the event this past weekend.
What a great time, thanks to Nav and some of the Sacramento Ohana she brought along for the ride. A few quality questions about the Mai Tai’s ingredients and components and some about its key ingredient (that would be rum, folks). We also had a great vibe at Jeff’s place and some tasty food provided by Jeff. I brought the rum and the cocktail ingredients.
We had three Mai Tais:
- First was a Trader Vic’s Mai Tai made with either Khukri rum from Nepal or Santiago aged rum from Cuba. One of these countries has a great reputation as a rum producer, but both are unusual and have a lighter column-still production method. Either one of these produced a fine Mai Tai.
- Second was a Mai Tai made with Hampden Great House 2020, a cask strength flavor bomb from Jamaica. The difference between our first Mai Tai and this was greatly evident, and even with a super boozy rum the cocktail is still very approachable. This shows how different rums produce a very different Mai Tai.
- We ended with a Blue Mai Tai, made with high quality Giffard Blue Curacao and a rum blend featuring Charley’s JB Overproof rum that’s available only in Jamaica. I’ve done different variants of this over the years and it still impresses; people expect it to be sweet like a Blue Hawaii but the boozy Jamaican rum gives it a good balance.
Thanks again to Jeff for hosting and to Nav for the winning bid.
Additional photos by Robyn Haas and Nav Singh.
