The Tia Mia is a modern tiki drink with a documented birth: bartender Ivy Mix built it around 2010 while working at Lani Kai, a short-lived Manhattan tiki bar opened by her mentor Julie Reiner. Mix had been floating mezcal on top of Mai Tais for the smoke, then went further and swapped the rhum agricole out entirely for Espadín mezcal, keeping the rest of the Mai Tai's orgeat-and-curaçao architecture intact. The name is an anagram of "Mai Tai" and a nod to a bar regular Mix called her tia de alma — spiritual aunt. When Reiner and Mix opened Leyenda in Brooklyn in 2015, the Tia Mia went on the opening menu and never left it.
It was a remarkably quick process, but this was also back in the day when creating a new cocktail was as easy as substituting something simple.
Ivy MixA Mai Tai, Rearranged
Mix's own account of the drink is refreshingly undramatic: she liked mezcal, she liked Mai Tais, and floating one on the other was the obvious next move. Once the float became a full pour, the drink needed a name that wasn't just "Mezcal Mai Tai" — an anagram of the parent drink's name, doubling as a tribute to a friend, did the job.
The recipe kept the Mai Tai's skeleton — citrus, orgeat, orange curaçao — and split the base between mezcal and aged rum instead of running on a single rum. That split is the whole point: rum keeps the drink recognizably tiki, mezcal drags it somewhere the original never went.
The Spec
This build follows the split-base structure Mix popularized: mezcal and aged rum in roughly equal measure, lime for snap, orgeat and rich syrup for body, and a small pour of dry curaçao to tie it back to the Mai Tai it's rearranged from.
Why mezcal instead of rhum agricole
The original Mai Tai leans on funky Jamaican rum for backbone. Mix pulled that entire register out and replaced it with mezcal's smoke, which reads as a completely different drink even though the citrus-orgeat-curaçao frame underneath is identical. Go smoky here — an entry-level Espadín does the job without fighting the rum.
Two base spirits, not a float
This isn't a Mai Tai with mezcal dashed on top; it's a genuine 1:1 split base. Pour both spirits in before you shake, not as a garnish move — the drink should taste like smoke and rum arriving together, not smoke arriving late.
Bottom Line
The Tia Mia is one of the rare tiki drinks from this era with a clean paper trail: a real bartender, a real bar, a documented year. It's also just a good excuse to see what a Mai Tai tastes like with its rum cut in half and its smoke turned up.