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The Piña Colada — Puerto Rico’s Iconic Tropical Escape · Into The Barchive

• ITB: Into the bark eye where the past comes alive. Fri. Ship the tails, let them dive. Welcome to the Barkive. Welcome in, Barkovist, and welcome back to Into the Barkive, the podcast where we dive deep into the stories, the people, and the cocktails that shape the way we drink. And on today's episode, it's dedicated to the Pena Colada. Time perfectly with National Pena Colada Day. Tomorrow. Yes. From the day of this release. ⁓ and this cocktail sits at a fascinating crossroads in our ongoing series on Tiki and tropical drinks. You know, it's a cocktail that feels instantly familiar, you know, almost too familiar, but yet when you take it apart. ⁓ it reveals a surprising amount of nuance. I don't know. When I think of pina colada, I've kind of had this little tune in the back of my head. So are we doing two pina colada stay? Huh, we always do two cocktails. Alright, so in this episode we're going to to go down the origins, right? Yeah, and we're gonna look at how the pina colada evolved and how it kind of oftentimes now gets dismissed as these are Overly sweet or overly frozen or overly simple. All right. So I know one of the ones that we're going to dive into, but we're gonna look at this cocktail's legacy, right? As always. Yep. And maybe some luxuriousness of this what cliche of a cocktail. Yeah, we're we're going to dissect and break down how the poor reputation of the pina colada comes from pre-made. mixes, poorly balanced ratios, over blending, and look at what is quite an elegant drink using some upscale ingredients today and how this drink ⁓ returns to popularity and why it's an important part of the tropical cocktail canon. So before we dive deep into this barkive, I say we get to whip shaking and maybe blending? Absolutely. To the bar. The shaken pina colada simple cocktail into our shaking tin. We're gonna do two ounces of a white rum. In this one, we're gonna use an aged white rum. One and a half ounces of coconut syrup. Some of you may have Coco Lopez, that's okay. I enjoy making my own fresh out of coconut milk and some sugar, equal parts, just like you would kind of make a simple syrup. Maybe a little extra flare of some orange water blossom and some rose water blossom in there just for some extra aromatics. One and a half of pineapple juice. And to help pep it up just a tad bit for some ⁓ some citrus, half ounce of fresh lime. We're gonna flash blend this. Nope, we're gonna whip shake it today. A little scosh of ice. And whoopshake. Slight aeration, a little bit of dilution, and let those pebbles talk to us and let me know when I'm done. And we are done. Go ahead and crack that still. If I can. Grab our frozen glassware. Party four. And we're gonna top with some fresh pebble ice. And for garnish, a dehydrated pineapple. And here we have our shaken pina colada. When we think of the pina colada, typically we think of a frozen pina colada, and we're going to demonstrate a recipe that takes us to a next level. So the first thing is we're going to replace the white rum with a split base of pineapple rum from Planaret. And again, typically we're skeptical about ⁓ flavored spirits, but These are top notch. So we've got Planaret Pineapple Rum, Planaray's Cut and Dry Coconut Rum. So both of these, it's not just extraps, it's like actual infusions of the fruit that make these delicious. So like this coconut rum, it's not suntan lotion, think more almond joy. ⁓ from there we'll add an ounce and a half of coconut syrup. Again, it's that one-to-one ⁓ coconut milk to sugar ratio. We'll add that to our blender cup. From there, we're going to add an ounce of pineapple juice. And then for a bit of acidity to make sure that the cocktail pops, we'll add a half ounce of lime juice. A lot of times one of the big problems with piña caladas is the lack of acidity. So this half ounce of lime juice is really important for the balance of the cocktail. One of the other unique ingredients of this is we're going to add a quarter teaspoon of xanthan gum to our cocktail first. So let me measure that out and pour that in our blender cup. Now, before we add ice, we want to make sure our liquid ingredients combine. So I'm going attach the base on the blender. add that to the base and then we'll let it blend for a few seconds. So that is just about five seconds on my blender clock. And so again, this helps incorporate the ingredients together. And now we'll add the pebble ice. And if you were one of our key techniques in frozen drinks is to make sure you have the right volume, is take your desired glassware and then add enough ice to fill up the glass. and that will likely get you a full glass. So I filled up my little Poco Grande glass with pebble ice and the pebble ice is important because it will blend easier and not take as long. So now we'll hook in the blender and blend until smooth. That is about ten seconds and from there. We'll take off the blender lid. And then pour it into the glass. Like so, and like I said, when you use your glass as the ice measurement device, especially with the pebble ice, it's perfect every time. And then we too will garnish with a dehydrated pineapple slice and add our straw. And then we have our frozen pina colada. Cheers. Now that we've built the cocktails, let's build a context. The history of the Pina Colada. Well, to understand the Pina Calada, you have to start in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where the drink has really become inseparable from the island's identity. In fact, in 1978, the Pinha Calada was designated as the official national drink of Puerto Rico, cementing its place not just as a cocktail. But as a symbol of hospitality, tourism and Caribbean flavor. Okay, so we've got nineteen seventy eight. Puerto Rico goes, Hey, this is our national cocktail of hospitality. I mean, comforting, loving. I mean, who doesn't again, just when you think tropical vacation, I want a pina colada on my hand. Songs about pina coladas, right? Like that's is mo that that cocktail is the like visual that most individuals have when thinking about vacation. ⁓ absolutely. And you know, despite it being such a popular drink, its origin story is still a little debated. Okay, much like most cocktails, we've got some controversy there. Yeah, and the most widely accepted version credits Bartender Ramon Monchito Marero at the Caribe Hilton in San Juan. Okay, so we've got another Hilton hotel. Yep. Okay. And so in the early 1950s, Marero was tasked with creating a signature drink that captured the spirit of Puerto Rico. And after months of experimentation, he arrived at a mixture of rum, coconut, and pineapple that becomes the pina colada. But Another claim attributes the drink to another bartender, Ramon Portas Mango, in 1963. Whoa, whoa, whoa. So we've got two Ramones fighting over who created. All right. Okay. So in this version of the story, the drink emerged when coconut cream was added to a traditional pineapple-based cocktail. Which was? Well, there was an Earlier drink called the pina colada in 19th century Cuba, which essentially is translated as strained pineapple juice. And it really refers to a shaken mixture of white rum, pineapple juice, lime juice, and sugar. Essentially a pineapple daiquiri. Yeah. Some accounts even connect the name Pina Calada to Caribbean pirates. But I think that story is maybe a little more romanticized than the actual documentation. I'm not seeing pirates rolling around with kind of co coconut syrup or coconut milk or juice or even coconut water, right? Like Yeah. But I think what we can say for certain is that the modern pinha colada depends heavily on one ingredient. Coconut syrup. Yeah, or Coca Lopez. Specifically a branded manufactured into okay. Because traditionally, coconut cream was very difficult and labor intensive to extract, but a Puerto Rican food scientist developed a new technique using pressure and temperature control for quicker extraction. Okay. And so and that new technique led to Coca Lopez. I a canned cocoa syrup. Yes, exactly. Sweetened coconut cream. Yeah. And the new can Coco Lopez was added to white Roman pineapple juice, served it in a blender, or maybe a blender to serve as a frozen drink, and it provided the texture and consistency that made the drink scalable and repeatable. And in many ways, without Coco Lopez, despite like some of its artificial ingredients and things like that. The pina colada wouldn't exist without it. ⁓ I I will when we talk about we don't yuck on yum, somebody's yum. The Coco Lopez is the one where I truly extend that olive branch to because most individuals are not going to make their own coconut syrup of some sort, especially for how much you yield from. an original base, right? When you actually go and get the can and then you add the sugar to it. Just the volume itself, most of us are not going through that much of coconut syrup for it to be cost efficient, while Cocoa Lopez, if you purchase it, reduces that cost efficiently and you're still getting a pretty decent bang for your buck. Well, and I mean even their craft cocktail bartenders who are making cocoa mixes where they take Coco Lopez and blend it with straight up coconut milk. Yeah, trying to give a a different mouthfeel, a different freshness that may come from that. Yeah, I'm trying to enhance that, but again, you can't take away the fact that Coco López still has a staple for what it is and what it adds to a cocktail. Absolutely. So the structure identity of our piña coladas. So I mean, structurally, the piña colada is deceptively simple. Rum, pineapple, coconut. But of course, with simplicity lies challenge, right? Every ingredient carries a lot of weight and balance is critical here. Yeah, specifically in yours, right? We had to like balance it. Well in mine as well, like adding some citrus. Like pineapple juice alone, much like orange juice alone, at times lands flat. Flabby, one may say, but I think a little bit of extra citrus there makes it, and you use the word pop. It makes it pop, just gives it a little extra layer of oomph that may have just been ⁓ to begin with. So, like while pineapple juice does have a little acid to it, it's not as acidic as like traditional citrus, like lemon and lime. It's sweeter, ⁓ it adds body to a cocktail. But again, it doesn't cut through the richness of the coconut like a lemon or lime would. And so this is why in most modern Pina Colada recipes, you have a small amount of lime juice to add acidity to sharpen the drink and kind of just bring in a clearer focus. I mean, your other option would be to acid adjust the pineapple juice. But that becomes more technical and not always the most ⁓ efficient way or easy for home bartenders. Some of them are not rolling around with, you know, containers of magnesium citrate or something like that in their cupboard. Yeah, and I mean even for cocktail bars, unless you're going through a ton of pina coladas and painkillers, it would be better just to add the extra lime juice than it would be to spend the time acid adjusting the pineapple. Okay, we've got kind of gone technical and some of the acid piece, but like traditionally rum provides this backbone, right? It's what a Puerto Rican-based, you said. So it would have been a lighter, like lighter rum. Yeah, so obviously traditionally the rum of choice would be a light Puerto Rican rum, something clean, subtle, designed not to overpower other flavors. So think about. This is your Bacardi Silver. Okay. Don Q. Yep. ⁓ you know, rums that are dis using column still distillation, lots of filtration, minimal aging. So you know, rums that the the flavors are restrained. Okay, so that's traditional. That flavors are restrained, let the juices do their thing, but Let the spirit provide some of just the alcohol. I mean, some flavor, not to take away from, but mostly the alcohol where the citr the juices are providing a little bit of or the sweeteners are providing that extra flavor profile. Now let's go into more of a modern approach, these modern interpretation, two bottles that we have in front of us, right? Mm-hmm. Where does that go? So this is where you have some room for experimentation. So doubling down on the Coconut and pineapple flavors already present in the drink using these high-quality flavor runs. I mean, ⁓ I think it's worth talking about the inspiration from this. This is not our original idea at all. No, ⁓ both of these definitely from Barbados. So ⁓ you'll see the brand new labeling for Planterray on their cut and drive. The old label for ⁓ this was plantation. They have now rebranded everything under this. Planteray label. And so our Figgins is definitely an older bottle of Figgins that is under a new label. But we spent time in Barbados and actually got to experience their version of a pina colada. And it was this. It was with their cut and dry coconut. And it was with their Stigans fancy pineapple. Not the smoky. Yeah. But the Stiggin fancy pineapple. And it provided us an excellent experience of just. what we thought a piña colada was and what it could be. And then gave us the opportunity and almost the I guess authority to try different versions of piña coladas with separating or trying new ingredients. Because again, our version was always that light white with the juices and syrup. That was it. Not playing with maybe some A's and intentional other spirits inside of it. Yeah, I mean this adds whole new layers of flavor to the cocktail. So like with the pineapple rum, what Planaret does is they take the skins and infuse it in one room. Then they take the fruit of the pineapple and infuse it in another room and then blend those things together. And I believe if memory serves on the infusion with the skins, they distill it again and then take the fruit infusion and marry those things together. And then on the coconut rum, they chop up coconuts, let them dry in the sun, and infuse them. And if I remember it was technically like one dried coconut per bottle, right? Was the ratio. Yeah, so I mean it's a lot of fruit. When a lot of times flavored spirits are flavored using extracts or artificial flavorings, these Flavored spirits from Planarray are very authentic in using the actual fruit on the label. So we take this side this little tangent to say that like modern interpretations often benefit from different blended styles of rum. Right? So adding just a small portion of an age rum even to my version could have added some depth into it, some additional structure, some additional mouthfeel, while In some of these like other Jamaican rums that we could have done could have been more esters, more aromatic, more complexity in a different manner, correct? Yeah. So I mean, this is an opportunity too, where instead of the two ounces of the white rum, you could even split it more ways. A la Don the Beach Comer, just like quickly looking up ⁓ San Diego bartender Eric Castro. Has a pina colada recipe for a shaken pina colada like yours, but he takes that rum base and splits it four ways. So a half ounce each, a Planarray three-star white. Okay, so we got Trinidad, Jamaica, and Barbados. Okay, a half ounce of Smith and Cross, which is a navy strength funky Jamaican rum. Okay. A half ounce of Planarray Dark Rum. Okay. So gives you some more molassesy sort of flavors. And then a half ounce of white rum agricole. ⁓ so having some of that Marg Martinique version of it. So even though it uses a split base of four bottles, it's t technically using f potentially six because that three-star has three different flavor complexities adding to its bottle. I mean again, layers upon layers upon layers. Yeah, and so this is an area where you could do a lot of experimentation along the way. Okay, so ⁓ we're talking about like rather than using just these one types of do we start talking about what does it look like using other maybe l what we don't think is as friendly ingredients. One might say a Malibu rum. Yeah, I mean One of the things about Malibu is it's not technically a rum, it's a rum liqueur. Okay. ⁓ it's only twenty one percent ABV, whereas the Planaret Cut and Dry is forty percent ABV. So I mean it is a full strength spirit. ⁓ again, Malibu tends more towards sunscreen like flavors. For most people, yes. Cut and dry, You know, the planner race team spent years of RD working on this rum. ⁓ and up until like a couple years ago, it was a Barbados exclusive. So again, the I think the wording that you use was very specific and we need to be intentional about the ingredients that we use. Liqueurs are there for a reason. Mm-hmm. If you're going to use it for that reason, it's perfect. If you're going to use it as the base ingredient as a rum substitute. then you're walking you should know what you're walking into. Malibu is not a rum, it is a coconut liqueur. Yeah, well, and although it has a rum base, it's going to add more sweetness to the drink and make a much sweeter pina colada. Yeah, and I'm using that coconut liqueur very specifically. Don't come at me in the ⁓ in the comments, but l let's let let's let truth be truth. It's 20 something percent ABV not holding up to what a true booze should be in at least I mean let's give ground to 40. Yeah. Right. Okay, so now we've talked about the elephant in the room with coconut and Malibu. I want to make sure that we call that one specifically out, but let's talk about now. Like they did their RD for being very specific for their flavor profiles, but now let's talk. juices does it matter for the juice. Yeah, I mean obviously in the perfect world you want a fresh press like juice your pineapple things like that. Juice your pineapple, juice your lime. If you can make your own coconut syrup, make your own coconut syrup, blah, yeah. But I mean essentially it's on pineapple juice, at least find a high quality non-sweetened pineapple juice that's bottled. That's that would be fine. ⁓ if you fresh press your pineapples, it's gonna be a little thicker, frothier. Frothier. But always fresh is best on the citrus. And notice when if you do go to a pre pre canned, pre packaged pineapple juice or any juice, some of those are already gonna come sweetened. And if that's the case, then adjust your cocktail accordingly. Like If you already know that your pineapple juice is going to be sweet and dial back on some of the sweetness that you would have used in your coconut syrup then, unless you want sweet, and then that's your preference. And then again, no yuck on your yum. Yeah. And then when we look at the coconut syrup or the cream of coconut, that's where a lot of your sweetness and then the creamy texture of the cocktail comes from. I mean I think it's really the thing that makes the pina colada the pina colada. Yeah, it's comfort. It's ⁓ I mean, it's not an ice cream, but dim, it's as close as an ice cream is you're gonna get on a hot beach, right? Yeah, and it's one of those where it's easy to overuse and because people enjoy that texture. But if you add too much coconut, the drink is gonna become too heavy and cloying. But if you don't add enough, It seems thin and it doesn't really seem like a pina colada anymore. Correct. It almost lends itself to kind of a pineapple coconut daiquiri. Yeah. Maybe on another episode. Yeah. The shaken pina colada then compared to what we know as the blended. I mean, when most of us think of a pina colada, we don't think shaken. We think it's that bad boy right there in your glass. Yeah, the shaken pina colada is really a clean expression of the drink structure. ⁓ when you take the blender out of the equation, you have more control over dilution and texture. And it's more like a tropical sour. Yep. Bright, structured, refreshing, and the coconut's more of a modifier rather than the dominant ingredient that gives it an ice cream or sorbet like texture in the blended version. Let's go to that ice cream sorbet with your frozen pina colada, the one that most people recognize, right? Yeah, and although it's the most recognizable, it's the most prone to error, ⁓ the big key is dilution control. Ice isn't just to make it cold, it's about the ⁓ it's an ingredient. If you add too much ice, ⁓ it can become like a brick. If you add too little ice, it becomes thin and watery. and so one of the things we've learned about pina coladas and frozen drinks more general comes from the chief cocktail officer of the Sunken Harbor Club in New York City, Garrett Richard. Okay. And so he worked on a technique in his book Tropical Standard, which is taking like science techniques and applying them to tropical antique drinks. Yes, sir. His big issue is with blender drinks is a lot of times blender drinks separate. Correct. And so if you notice on my drink, what mainly what you're seeing is just the frost on the outside of the glass. But sometimes on blender drinks, if you let them sit there long enough, they begin to separate the ice and kind of the liquid. I'm gonna and ⁓ go into ⁓ the ingredient that you use that that goes to there and I'm gonna take a little bit deeper dive into it. So talk about xanthem gum. Well, so here's the story of how he got there. So at a lot of bars, their frozen drinks are in slushy machines. They're constantly churning like that. But these aluminute blender drinks, right? Most of us are not don't have slushing machines. Or if we do they're just for parties. Right. If you want a frozen pina colada and it's just you and your wife at home, you don't fire up a slushy machine to do that. Nope. ⁓ and so to solve this consistency issue, Garrett Richard was thinking, okay, who makes more blender drinks than anyone in the country? It's not a cocktail bar. Who is it? Starbucks. Starbucks. Yeah, so if you think about Starbucks Frappuccinos, Garrett Richard is like, okay, they're making tons of blender drinks every day at their coffee houses. So he's scouring Reddit threads of Starbucks employees, and he discovered the key ingredient is Xanthan gum. And what it is, it is a bacteria that ⁓ essentially works in a way to thicken and stabilize. Drinks. And so the use of the Xanthem gum keeps this blender drink from separating like that. And Starbucks, we're not throwing your name out there just for free. We know you're coming to Nashville, so feel free to hit us up. We're happy to ⁓ to incorporate you in a couple of our cocktail contents. So keep that in mind later in 2026. And and so, like when you look broadly at this, is When you compare the pina colada to the sometimes cryptic builds of classic tiki drinks like from Don the Beachcomber or Trader Vic, the pina colada is pretty simple. It's very transparent. Yep. There are no special spice syrups, no bitters. ⁓ you know, the only reason there's another like juice element is just to give it that pop of acidity. Yep. The main focus is integration. How do you bring these ingredients together and make them into a unified whole? Yeah, and it's I mean, it's actually very smart for how complex it is. Again, we talked about like fresh pineapple juice is frothy. Xanthem gum introducing to a cocktail. If you'll notice, again, yours has it and mine doesn't, and my glass is saturated because it's clinging to like Another vessel where your xanthem gum is allows all those particles kind of those materials to stay together cohesive where mine is trying to separate. You can even start to see some of the ice that didn't completely shake up when I whip shake or when I poured. Yeah. Like mine still has that kind of separation going on, and eventually it would separate. We would have liquid at the bottom and kind of that thicky ⁓ syrup and pineapple froth at the top. Yours, it's It will marry and mellow all the way down, where I kind of have a Guinness drag on my pint, if you will. And yours is going to be clean and there the wash line may have a few that didn't stick, but that's more frost than it is the actual ingredients on the inside. And it's very complex that they took three, potentially four ingredients, and then again adding the xanthan gum to kind of make them mellow together. Right. So we focused on like this integration piece in this cocktail. That was the the core focus of taking something very simple and now making it I w the word isn't complex, it's just intentional. Yeah. Right. The legacy of the modern version of a pina colada. Yeah, I mean if we think about the pina colada's reputation. has been on a roller coaster of sorts. In its early years, it represents luxury and escape, this distilled version of Caribbean hospitality. But as frozen drink machines and cheap artificial commercial mixes became widespread, the drink becomes associated with excess and artificiality. So as most events in culture, pop culture, plays a part in the piña colada, correct? Yeah, I mean, part of the reason the drink becomes so popular is Rupert Colm's 1979 song Escape, subtitled the Pina Colada song. It hit number one on the Billboard charts and this song cemented the drink's image as carefree and indulgent But it also kind of contributed to the perception that the pina colada was an unserious drink. Yeah, it made it a little too playful and laxadaisical. Yeah, but fortunately in recent years the pina calada has undergone a quiet revival. Bartenders have returned to fresh ingredients, thoughtful rum selections, and precise techniques, and in doing so. They've rediscovered what made the drink compelling in the first place. If if if I ever go to a bar and I know that they have coconut cream and pineapple behind the bar based off of some of their specs, one of the first things that I will do when I judge a bar is if they don't have those two, I judge them by a daiquiri. Next episode. But I would prefer to judge them by the pina colada. Yeah. Because it takes one additional ingredient that I know is a pain in the butt at times to get right. And you can almost put somebody through the ring just to see how they're going to approach that. Are they going to use one ROM? If they are, what ROM are they going to use? Or are they going to use a split base to be more intentional about the flavor profiles? It's a good way to I mean, you're not testing a not not testing in a bad way, but just getting a better understanding of the establishment that you're working with. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean in many ways, at its best, opinion clawada is a study in texture and balance. How can you make it rich but not heavy, sweet but not cloying, simple but not simplistic? Again, running a bar through its druthers, just making sure that it can hit its pace without overthinking. So within this boar broader context. Yeah, so when we think about tiki and tropical cocktails. The pina colada is definitely more of a tropical cocktail. Yeah. I mean, but it's a bridge in some ways. It's intricate and theatrical, like the early world of tiki, but it's more streamlined, fewer ingredients. ⁓ and when we think about it with modern cocktail culture of how do we balance those simple classic and modern classic cocktails, a pina colada is three or four ingredients typically so it's working through that ⁓ balance equation. As you celebrate National Pina Colada Day, we ask you to take this opportunity to revisit this drink. Maybe it was been a week, maybe it's been a year, but do it with more intention. Be intentional with the ingredients that you're using. Use fresh ingredients, dial on your ratios, split base, experiment a little bit, and then also Shaken versus frozen. Yeah, and when you approach ⁓ this cocktail with care, the pina colada becomes something far more compelling than its reputation suggests. It's a balanced, textural, and deeply refreshing expression of tropical cocktail craft. As we end this episode, as always, please like, subscribe on YouTube, ⁓ Instagram, TikTok. Follow us on one of our podcasts on Apple or Spotify or send us an email over at podcast at Intothebarchive.com. We'd love to interact with you and find out a little bit more about your favorite piña colada or the destination that you thought that you had the best piña colada. We'd love to hear more about that. In our next episode, what do we got? So Next time on End of the Barchive, we'll shift from rich and blended to sharp and precise. Ooh. We're headed to Havana and the legendary bar El Floridita. El Floridita. Yep. And there we're going to explore the work of Constante Rubalague Vert and break down his iconic daiquiri variations from number one through number four. Whoa whoa whoa. We're doing four cocktails? Yep. Put on your big board, britches. Bocalow. And all of this is just in time for National Dacquery Day. So it's a study on just how small adjustments to sugar, lime, maraschino can completely transform a drink built for just ⁓ from just a few ingredients. And in many ways, it's a perfect follow-up and a reminder that sometimes the simplest cocktails offer the deepest lessons. So until next time, keep exploring the past, one drink at a time as we dive deeper into the barkive. Cheers.