Hardly any other drink captures the feeling of sandy beaches and palm trees as well as this recipe. Maybe that’s why the Piña Colada is one of the most famous cocktails in the world. At the same time, it divides opinions. Some find it too sweet, others love it for exactly that reason. The Piña Colada isn’t a mixed drink that gives the base spirit much room to shine. That may be one reason why it’s often frowned upon in professional circles.
But even if many mixologists don’t like to hear it, one of the core tasks of mixed drinks—and a big part of their success—has always been to make alcohol appealing to people who wouldn’t enjoy it neat. In earlier times, or during Prohibition, acidity and sugar were used to mask poor quality spirits and harsh “fusel” notes. Today, the same idea applies to guests who don’t want to miss the effects of alcohol, but don’t care much for its taste. The Piña Colada is a textbook example of this.
A young recipe with many demands
In its modern form, the Piña Colada is a comparatively young recipe. The Caribe Hilton’s Beachcomber Bar in Puerto Rico claims to have served it for the first time in 1954. The hotel dates the invention to August 15 and names bartender Ramon “Monchito” Marrero Perez as the creator. However, when American cocktail historian Jared Brown interviewed witnesses in 2005, the exact origin could no longer be determined. Ricardo Gracia, who worked at the Beachcomber Bar at the time, claimed it was a team effort.1 Another claim points to Don Ramon Portas Mingot, bartender at Barrachina, who is said to have invented the Piña Colada in 1963. Since 1978, the recipe—thanks to the governor at the time—has been the official national drink of Puerto Rico.
Pirate legend and early mentions
As with the Mojito, the origin story also includes a hard-to-verify pirate legend. According to the tale, Puerto Rican pirate Roberto Cofresi (1791–1825) served his sailors a mixture of rum, pineapple and coconut water in the early 19th century.2 3 It’s certainly plausible: rum was popular among seafarers, and coconut water was a well-known substitute for drinking water when fresh sources weren’t available. Cofresi is celebrated in Puerto Rico as a national hero—something like a Robin Hood among pirates who robbed the rich and shared with the poor. It is documented that he sold stolen goods at regional markets. But there is no evidence in sources about Cofresi’s life that confirms the serving of this rum–pineapple–coconut drink.
Originally, the term “Piña Colada” (piña = pineapple, colada = strained) referred to fresh, strained pineapple juice offered as a refreshment. Evidence appears in early 20th-century Caribbean travel accounts4 5 and in the 1930 Club de Cantineros handbook from Cuba.6
The Piña Colada is first mentioned as an alcoholic drink in a December 1922 Travel Magazine article about Cuba. The report describes a mixture of fresh pineapple juice, sugar, lime, and Bacardi rum.7
In April 1950, The New York Times published an article about Caribbean drinks and described a mixture known in Cuba as a Piña Colada: brown rum, pineapple pieces, and coconut milk.8
Evolution toward the modern Piña Colada
To sum it up: the Piña Colada wasn’t a single stroke of Puerto Rican genius, nor the achievement of one bartender alone. The regional availability of ingredients—and the use of pineapple and coconut water as refreshing, hydrating staples—suggests that once bars and hotels started competing for paying customers, combining rum, pineapple and coconut in one drink was an almost inevitable idea. It’s also worth noting that the first industrially produced Cream of Coconut was introduced in Puerto Rico in 19549 and that electric blenders entered bars in the mid-1950s. Both developments likely contributed to the success of the recipe as presented by the Caribe Hilton’s Beachcomber Bar. The creamy, icy texture we associate with a Piña Colada today only became truly practical with the blender, and making Cream of Coconut used to be a time-consuming process before it became a product you could simply buy.
Ingredients, technique, and rum choice
That leaves cream as the final—and most controversial—ingredient. In a positive sense, it’s like cooking: used carefully, it can round out and refine a dish. Fans of the Piña Colada are hard to convince otherwise. Still, in our view, it isn’t truly necessary. Especially with fresh pineapple, the result without cream is noticeably lighter and fruitier.
When it comes to rum, we’re happy to let the guest decide. For those who want to avoid the taste of alcohol, a light, unaged rum is the best fit. For everyone else, we recommend trying a Piña Colada with a darker, more robust rum.
Charles Schumann and the Colada family
Finally, we shouldn’t forget to mention Charles Schumann.10 His significant contribution to reviving German bar and cocktail culture in the 1980s also matters for Piña Colada lovers. He demonstrated the potential of the basic Colada formula and created drinks such as the Swimming Pool or the Flying Kangaroo. Today, you can certainly speak of a whole “Colada” drink family—mixing different base spirits and/or liqueurs with pineapple, coconut and cream.
Our Piña Colada recipe
- Golden rum: 4–5 cl
- Coconut syrup: 1–2 cl
- Cream: 1–2 cl
- Pineapple juice: 12 cl
Blend everything with crushed ice and pour into a large tumbler over ice.
Cheers, your moving bars team
In-depth article on the Piña Colada that inspired this post:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi%C3%B1a_Colada#cite_note-10
Footnotes
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Jared Brown: If you Like Piña Coladas. The History of the Piña Colada. In: Mixologist. The Journal of the American Cocktail. Mixellany, New York 2005, ISBN 0-9760937-0-7, p. 90ff. ↩
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https://web.archive.org/web/20090510064939/http://www.elnuevodiario.com.do/app/article.aspx?id=110184 ↩
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https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89064200611&view=1up&seq=41&skin=2021&q1=PinaColada ↩
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https://euvs-vintage-cocktail-books.cld.bz/1930-Club-de-Cantineros-de-la-Republica-de-Cuba-Manual-Oficial/104/ ↩
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Note: the December 1922 issue is not accessible online; the quoted passage is reproduced here: https://wiki.webtender.com/wiki/Pina_Colada ↩
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https://www.nytimes.com/1950/04/16/archives/at-the-bar.html ↩
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram%C3%B3n_L%C3%B3pez_Irizarry ↩