Trader Vic's Bartender's Guide and the Mai Tai

I understand that the 1972 edition of Trader Vic's Bartender's Guide includes two recipes for the Mai Tai, but it's conspicuously absent from the 1948 edition. Vic supposedly invented the drink in 1944. Did it take a while to catch on, or us there another reason why he might have excluded it? I don't have the revised edition, does he comment on its exclusion from the first edition?

I always figured he didn't want to give away the recipe the first time around. In the 1972 edition, he discusses how he created the drink, and how it had grown and spread. He doesn't say anything about omitting it from the earlier edition.

Both Don the Beachcomber and Trader Vic were big on keeping their exact drink recipes secret for as long as possible early on. DtB was so notoriously successful we did not get an authentic recipe for his original Zombie until Jeff Berry's breakthrough work. I've come to think that the reveal of the Mai Tai recipe in Trader Vic's cooking and bartending guides starting in 1972 may have been due to the famous "who created the Mai Tai" lawsuit. The upside was that Bergeron won, but the downside may have been having to reveal the recipe. The lawsuit was resolved just before those editions came out.

I haven't researched the Mai Tai very extensively, but Trader Vic had revealed the recipe, at least in general terms, earlier than 1972. I found a reference from 1970, but I seem to recall seeing every earlier ones.

The Mai Tai was going to be my next project after the Zombie, but the level of interest didn't justify it.

I had a funny thought today - to my knowledge, no one yet has come up with a recipe for the "Don Beach" cocktail. But if you look at the description, Martinique and Jamaican rums are what Trader Vic's was using for its Mai Tai. Wouldn't it be funny if Don simply took Vic's recipe and put his own name on it?

"I am Lono!" -- Hale Ka'a Tiki Lounge

[ Edited by: arriano 2013-12-09 11:25 ]