Orgeat’s Nutty Comeback

• By WineBottleMag
• July 31, 2025
• Comeback Nutty Orgeats
• With 0 comments

Orgeat has long been a core component in tiki drinks. It’s one of the ingredients that gives Mai Tais their distinctive, slightly nutty flavor. But lately orgeat has been breaking out of its lane as mixologists experiment with adding it to untraditional cocktails.

Pronounced or-ZHAT, orgeat imparts a marzipan-like flavor and rich textural element to drinks. It can complement virtually any spirit, from tequila and whiskey to vodka and rum. While it’s suddenly trending again, orgeat is thought to have originated in sixth-century Europe, when people used leftover water from boiling barley to treat fevers. 

It’s unclear exactly when this happened, but at some point, people started flavoring the barley water with almonds, sugar water and citrus peels, crafting a sweet drink to enjoy outside of medicinal purposes. Barley was eventually dropped altogether, and what remained is considered a traditional orgeat today. (The name orgeat comes from the French word for barley, ogre, a reminder of its humble beginnings.) 

In the 1940s, orgeat gained popularity for its role in the Mai Tai, where the ingredient was almost exclusively used for years. But as bartenders have started experimenting with the syrup, they’re proving orgeat belongs in more than just tropical cocktails. 

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“I’ve seen [orgeat] pop up on menus more often,” says Ben Bozeman, bar manager at Lucky Cheetah in Portland, Maine. “It’s just another way of adding a fun flavor to a drink, something other than sweet or sour. It’s like, ‘Oh, let’s do a little nutty element to it,’ which is a fun wrinkle.”

From Retro to Reimagined 

Both Bozeman and Jordan Joseph, beverage director at Crawford Hospitality in Raleigh, North Carolina, say that orgeat can be made with nuts beyond the traditional almond, like pistachios, cashews or hazelnuts, or even no nuts at all. While the nutty flavor is key, there are many ways to achieve it.

For example, Joseph makes an orgeat using Tiger Chai tea from Tin Roof Teas, oat milk and sugar at Crawford Brothers Steakhouse. He uses the creamy housemade orgeat in the restaurant’s “Port of Spain” cocktail, which also features mezcal, cachaça and Angostura bitters. His team uses oat milk for most of their orgeats due to nut allergy concerns, but the result still tastes similar to nut-based versions. 

On its own, the Tiger Chai orgeat evokes fall in a glass. Its gentle sweetness blends well with the smokiness of the mezcal to produce a smooth, complex cocktail.

Across town, cocktail bar Sous Terre is putting its spin on a classic Mai Tai by using a roasted pistachio-based orgeat; nearby restaurant Peregrine is also making a pistachio orgeat for its Mai Tai riff. 

In Manhattan, modern Vietnamese restaurant La Dong uses a housemade macadamia orgeat in its recently introduced banana leaf Mai Tai-inspired cocktail, La Đồng. 

At Lucky Cheetah, Bozeman crafts an orgeat from sesame paste to use in the espresso martini, lending the drink toasty, almost buttery notes.

“The final product has that familiar nutty sweetness that makes orgeat such a classic ingredient, but with a richer, more roasted quality that is really fun and unique,” he says. “I don’t know if the purists will consider my sesame syrup to be an orgeat, but I think the flavor is close enough that it warrants inclusion.” He uses sesame oil-washed vodka with his sesame orgeat to play up the drink’s warm aromas.

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Orgeat may be an old ingredient, but bars are having fun making it into something new. Plus, making orgeat at home is surprisingly simple.

“You can really put orgeat into any [drink] you want if it calls for any sort of sugar or simple syrup,” says Joseph. “It functions as your sweetener and gives body and mouthfeel.” He’s added the syrup to Old Fashioneds, whiskey sours and even margaritas.

Homemade Orgeat

This no-fuss homemade orgeat recipe calls for store-bought almond milk and just a few minutes of your time.

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