The Montego Bay has an unusually well-documented pedigree for a tiki drink of its name, but it also has a doppelganger problem: a completely different, modern "Montego Bay" (created by bartender Brandon Lockman at Portland's Red Star Tavern in 2014) circulates under the same name on cocktail databases. This recipe is the older one — Victor "Trader Vic" Bergeron's version, printed in his 1972 Trader Vic's Bartender's Guide and marked there with his own "TV" logo, the mark he reserved for recipes he considered his signature work. The original called for Rhum Negrita, a French-labeled but Jamaican-leaning dark rum; the version below follows Difford's Guide's modernized adaptation, which swaps in agricole blanc.
Marked with Vic's own "TV" stamp — his shorthand for a drink he was willing to put his name on.
Two Drinks, One Name
Search for the Montego Bay today and you'll find two unrelated recipes sharing the name: a 2014 Portland original, and this one — Trader Vic's 1972 print recipe, built from juice of half a lime, a dash of rock candy syrup, a dash of triple sec, a dash of Angostura, and an ounce of Rhum Negrita, shaken and strained into a chilled tiki stem glass. It's a real, dated, attributable recipe from a named bartender's own published guide, which puts it well ahead of most drinks in this batch on documentation.
Rhum Negrita was likely closer in character to a Jamaican rum than to a true French agricole, despite the French label. Difford's Guide's current adaptation modernizes the spec with agricole blanc and scaled-up citrus and syrup, which is the version served here.
The Spec
Shaken hard and fine-strained up, the way Bergeron built most of his citrus-forward tiki sours — no crushed ice, no garnish clutter, just a clean agricole backbone with orange curaçao rounding the edges.
Agricole blanc, not Rhum Negrita
Rhum Negrita is hard to find outside collector bottles today, so agricole blanc is the honest modern stand-in the drink has settled on — it keeps the grassy, vegetal cane-juice note that a Jamaican-style rum wouldn't give, even though it's a step away from what Bergeron actually poured.
Rich syrup over rock candy
Bergeron's rock candy syrup (a coarser, slower-dissolving sugar syrup) isn't standard behind most bars now. A 2:1 rich simple syrup gets the same body and sweetness without requiring a specialty ingredient.
Bottom Line
A genuinely dated, genuinely attributed 1972 Trader Vic's sour — just make sure you're pouring this one and not the unrelated 2014 Portland drink that shares its name.