Totally Tropical Mai Tai

The Totally Tropical Mai Tai is a brand-new house recipe published by Simon Difford — the founder of Difford's Guide — in March 2026, which makes it one of the youngest drinks in this collection by a wide margin. It is not Trader Vic Bergeron's 1944 original and doesn't claim to be; think of it as a modern bartender's riff that keeps the Mai Tai's rum-curaçao-orgeat-lime backbone and then stacks on pineapple rum, amaretto, falernum, and allspice dram until the drink is closer to a full tiki punch than a classic four-ingredient sour. This site found no documentation of it anywhere except Difford's Guide itself, which tracks — it's only a few months old at the time of writing.

A New Drink Wearing an Old Name

The real Mai Tai's history is a settled, if contentious, matter: Victor "Trader Vic" Bergeron built it in 1944 at his Oakland restaurant around a 17-year-old Jamaican rum, curaçao, orgeat, and lime, and spent decades arguing with Don the Beachcomber's camp over who actually invented it first. None of that argument touches this drink. The Totally Tropical Mai Tai is Simon Difford's own 2026 creation, credited to him directly and published on his own site — there's no older recipe being revived here, and no claim that this replaces or corrects the Trader Vic original.

Given how recently it was published, there's no independent write-up, bar menu, or competing source to check it against yet. That may change; for now, this is a single-source drink and the copy says so.

The Spec

It keeps the Mai Tai's rum-curaçao-orgeat-lime spine, then layers in a second rum, an amaretto pour, falernum, and a whisper of allspice dram — considerably more ingredients than the original four.

Why two almond-adjacent sweeteners

Orgeat and amaretto both bring a nutty-sweet note, but they're not redundant here — orgeat is milder and more floral, amaretto is darker and more assertively almond-and-caramel. Together they push the drink toward dessert territory in a way a single one wouldn't.

The allspice dram is a whisper, not a pour

At roughly a twelfth of an ounce, the allspice dram is closer to a heavy dash than a measured pour. It's there for a warm background spice note, not to announce itself — over-pour it and the drink tips into mulled-wine territory.

Bottom Line

Judge this one on its own terms: a dense, ingredient-stacked modern tiki drink that happens to share a name and a rum-curaçao-orgeat spine with a much older classic. It isn't trying to be that classic, and shouldn't be ordered expecting it.

The Mai Tai Family