The original mai tai, at a price

The Merchant Hotel in Belfast is a true cocktailian bar - even the ice is "hand-cut" from pure water imported from Fiji. It has offered the "original" Trader Vic's mai tai (made with Appleton VX and Myers' rum) for some time, but now has an optional upgrade: a more original original mai tai made with seventeen-year-old Wray & Nephew rum, the very rum Vic Bergeron specified in his account of how he invented the drink:

"I took down a bottle of 17-year-old rum. It was J. Wray Nephew from Jamaica; surprisingly golden in color, medium bodied, but with the rich pungent flavor particular to the Jamaican blends. The flavor of this great rum wasn't meant to be overpowered with heavy additions of fruit juices and flavorings."

For a time, many thought Vic's story was spurious (a made-up story involving the invention of a cocktail? How could that be?). Rum collector Stephen Remsberg was among the doubters. "I've been picking up price lists from early part of century, and I would have sworn to you six months ago that he was just blowing smoke, because special reserve has never been anything other than 15 year old rum," he told me during my research of the book. But then he turned up a list of rums stocked by Vic's rival Don the Beachcomber, which included a specially bottled 17-year-old Wray & Nephew reserve. How Vic got hold of a bottle is unclear, but they did exist. That lent his story some credibility.

Now, the mai tai served over in Northern Ireland isn't actually from a vintage bottle. It's newly produced special reserve aged 17 years, with just six bottles issued. The price of a single cocktail? £750, or about $1,500. (And it's made with a miserly 1.3 ounces of rum.) The price makes it, according to the Guinness Book people, the most expensive cocktail in the world. (The hotel reports, without bias, "those lucky enough to sample this cocktail have confirmed that it was worth every penny!")

This mai tai evidently displaces the world's formerly most-expensive tipple: The Ritz Sidecar ($500), served at the Hemingway Bar of the Hotel Ritz in Paris and featuring 1865 Ritz Fine Champagne. It's unclear why the Dazzle Cocktail – served in Manchester, England, and featuring a six and a half carat pink tourmaline and diamond ring in lieu of an olive ($30,500) – is not considered the most expensive. Perhaps baubles disqualify.

Also, despite the hotel's claim above, I've seen no actual reports on whether an actual anyone has actually ordered one of these drinks. If so, it might offer an interesting avenue of investigation: perhaps money can be more injurious to your brain and judgment than even drinking.

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