IBA Tiki

The International Bartenders Association's official tiki cocktail, a rum-forward tropical blend balancing citrus, orgeat, and falernum for an authentic Polynesian-inspired experience.

The IBA Tiki is an official International Bartenders Association cocktail created for the organization's 2024 updated New Era Drinks list, representing the IBA's formal recognition of the tiki genre — the Polynesian-fantasy cocktail movement that transformed American drinking culture from the 1930s onward — as a legitimate and historically significant category deserving official documentation. Tiki culture originated with two Californian bar entrepreneurs: Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt (Donn Beach, Don the Beachcomber), who opened his first Hollywood bar in 1933, and Victor Jules Bergeron Jr. (Trader Vic), who established Hinky Dink's in Oakland in 1934. Both men built elaborate Polynesian-themed bar environments and developed complex multi-rum cocktails using Caribbean spirits, tropical juices, house-made syrups, and imported ingredients including orgeat (almond syrup), falernum (Barbadian spiced liqueur), and fresh citrus. The IBA Tiki formula captures the genre's defining structural elements: the multi-rum base (typically combining a light rum with a dark or aged rum for depth and a Jamaican pot-still rum for funk), the acid-sweet balance of citrus and orgeat, the falernum's spiced complexity, and the visual garnish tradition of tiki mugs, orchid flowers, and citrus wheels that made tiki presentation as theatrical as its flavors. The formula acknowledges Donn Beach and Trader Vic's foundational contributions.