James Bond never ordered one. It is hard to picture Ernest Hemingway setting a frosty one down next to his typewriter. Yet the Pina Colada is the drink of choice for countless cruise ship passengers, sun burnt tourists sporting loud Hawaiian shirts, countless infrequent imbibers, and, in truth, the one of the most broadly influential cocktails ever created.

Of course, like many great flavor combinations, before the drink's history began, the Pina Colada had an extensive pre-history. Literally translated, Pina Colada means "strained pineapple". Minus the coconut,the combination of rum and pineapple dates back centuries. In his 1824An Essay on the Inventions and Customs of both Ancients and Moderns in the Use of Inebriating Liquors, Samuel Morewood wrote, "Time adds much to the mildness and value of rum, which the planters, it is said, often improve by the addition of pineapple juice."

By this time, rum infused with pineapple was also very popular in parts of Europe, where fresh pineapple was far too costly for all but the wealthy. In Charles Dickens' 1838 book The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club: "Mr. Stiggins was easily prevailed on to take another glass of the hot pineapple rum and water, and a second, and a third,and then to refresh himself with a slight supper previous to beginning  again."

The recipe was simple, as given in Modern Domestic Cookery, and Useful Receipt Book By Elizabeth Hammond, circa 1817: "An excellent flavour may be given to it by putting into the cask some pineapple rinds. The longer rum is kept, the more valuable it becomes. If your rum wants a head,whisk some clarified honey with a little of the liquor, and pour the whole into the cask. Three pounds of honey is sufficient for sixty gallons."

The first record of Europeans encountering a pineapple points to the island of Guadeloupe—November 1493. Sailors on Columbus' second voyage named the curious fruit pina as it resembled a giant pine cone. The native Tainos were already drinking pineapple juice (which they called yayamaby) for refreshment and as a digestive aid, especially after consuming meat. Taino women were known to use it as an exfoliant and skin whitener. It was Columbus who brought the first pineapples to Spain. And this exotic fruit enchanted Europe.

It was not long before the pineapple became a symbol of wealth and hospitality throughout Europe and the colonies. Ship captains would mark a triumphant return from the tropics by placing a pineapple at their front gate: a gesture adopted from Caribbean tribes. Plus, thepineapple became the crowning glory on many upper-class European tables.

In the Caribbean, jugo de pina became pina fria in the early 1800s, after Cuban officials issued a plea for ice that was answered with shipments both from Spain and New England. By the turn of the twentieth century advances in transportation meant flocks of tourists could join the Caribbean planters enjoying frosty rum and pineapple libations. A US publication, Travel, recommended the drink in detail in 1922: "But best of all is a pina colada, the juice of a perfectly ripe pineapple—a delicious drink in itself—rapidly shaken up with ice, sugar, lime and Bacardi rum in delicate proportions. What could be more luscious, more mellow and more fragrant?"

No doubt people in cold climates were by now taking advantage of pineapple shipments from Jim Dole's newly founded Hawaiian Pineapple Company which strove to put the fruit in every American grocery store.

In Puerto Rico, the ingredients even played a pivotal role in local politics when, in 1917, Prohibition was voted on by local referendum.The ballots (designed to be easily understood by a rural populace with a low literacy rate) were printed with a bottle of rum on one side anda pineapple on the other. Surprisingly, the pineapple was the overwhelming favorite, and Puerto Rico became officially dry until 1934.

Cuban ever succumbed to the Noble Experiment. A National Geographic writer in 1933 reminisced: "I have sat at a sidewalk cafe table, surrounded by well-dressed, well-fed people, sipping a pina colada, and listening to an orchestra..." But what was he sipping at the time?

Harry La Tourette Foster, in his 1928 travel book The Caribbean Cruise,wrote: "For the tea-totaler, there are plenty of non-alcoholic drinks obtainable in most places. In Havana, for instance, a favorite iced drink is jugo de pina or pina colada..."

A Hartford Courant article published on 20 August 1922, reflects this ambiguity: "Down in Havana, Cuba, there is a soft drink that is verycaressing to the esophagus, known in Spanish as either pina fria colada or pina fria sin colada, which might be copied in the United States where soft drinks are now legion."

A1950 column in The New York Times titled "At The Bar" mentioned that"Cuba's Pina Colada (rum, pineapple and coconut milk)." Yet, the official 1948 book of Cuba's bartending guild, El Arte del Cantinero,contained only a non-alcoholic recipe for chilled and sweetened pineapple juice under the title "Pina Colada". It is likely that drink had been served for more than a century in at least one legendary Havana location. In 1820, a bodega called Pina de Plata (The Silver Pineapple) opened in Havana. It is said they sold fresh juices, andtheir beverage sales were so successful that in 1867 they became a bar,changing the name to La Florida, later to become El Floridita.

Farmore important than the first collision amongst rum, pineapple, and coconut in a blender is the drink's transition from ignominy to ubiquitous cabana libation. Who standardized the Pina Colada into the drink we all know today? The mass media and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico claim that the modern Pina Colada was introduced in San Juan, on15 August 1954 at the Caribe Hilton's Beachcomber Bar. Opened in 1949,with a prime beachfront location and modern amenities it drew an affluent, international clientele: John Wayne, Elizabeth Taylor, Jose Ferrar, Gloria Swanson and a host of others. Joan Crawford declared the Caribe Hilton's Pina Colada was "better than slapping Bette Davis in the face." These were the celebrities who made the drink glamorous and,for a short time, far more sophisticated than any frozen drink has aright to be.

One claim frequently ignored by most cocktail authorities is that Coco Lopez launched the Pina Colada out of obscurity. This appears to be true. Certainly, the modern Pina Colada would not exist, much less become widely adopted, if not for pre-made cream of coconut.

A common cooking ingredient throughout the tropics, but very labor intensive to prepare, cream of coconut was first packaged as Coco Lopez, in 1954, by Ramon Lopez Irizarry, an agricultural professor from the University of Puerto Rico who automated this arduous task. Irizarry personally approached bartenders and chefs around San Juan, encouraging them to experiment with his new creation. The Coco Lopez company then continued to spotlight the Pina Colada in its promotional literature for over thirty years, spreading the drink around the world. It finally found its way into the Mr. Boston Deluxe Official Bartenders Guide sometime between 1970 and 1972.

The Pina Colada has been described as sickly sweet, a dessert in a glass, a beginner's drink. But like many other classics, it has stood the test of time because in the right time and place, prepared properly, it can be the perfect drink for that moment. The time and place might be mid-afternoon in a South Beach hotel swimming pool, or on the in the shade of an ocean-side cabana flanked appropriately by coconut palms.

The ideal recipe is as follows:

PINA COLADA

A cup of shaved ice

120ml pineapple juice

45ml anejo blanco rum

60ml coconut cream

Combine all ingredients in a shaker. Shake well. Strain the mixture into a frozen collins glass. Then add the shaved ice directly from the shaker.Garnish with a chunk of fresh pineapple. Decorate it with an umbrella if you must. Optional: a few dashes of Angostura Bitters prior to blending produces a more complex and balanced drink.

[This article was originally published in German in 2009 in Mixology Magazine]

        

BANISH CHERRY FROM COCKTAIL IN GOTHAM

Fruit Growers Alarmed at Ostracism of Succulent Ingredient of Mixture

[Special Dispatch to The Call]

San Jose. Dec. 24.—News has reached the fruit centers of this city that the cherry and the olive grown in this valley have lost caste with the New York cocktail mixers. In the city of the Great White Way no wine clerks drop cherries or olives into cocktails now, unless someone asks for them, and local growers and packers ...

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Back in the 1980s, vitamin C was touted as a wonder drug and everybody was loading up as much as they could. Then studies revealed that chewable vitamin C tablets were about as tooth-damaging as crystal meth, and they disappeared from drug store shelves.

Fast-forward a couple decades. Sensodyne and other toothpastes for sensitive teeth are starting to dominate the toothpaste aisles. Why do people’s teeth hurt, and what does this have to do with bartending?

                 ...

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We were on our way to Newark with a chatty driver, and the inevitable question came up: “So, what do you do?” We explained that we are drinks historians, writers, and work in distilleries. Yes, we really drink for a living. Seriously. Bad hangovers? No. Then the driver asked, “What’s your secret? I’m a whisky drinker, and I get the worst hangovers every time I drink.” It’s simple: a large glass of water between each drink. He stared at me in the rearview mirror long enough that I ...

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A while back we wrote about a curious shaker-like set of metal cups on display in London's Victoria and Albert Museum. It appeared to be a 16th century shaker, popular in Germany at that time. We recently discovered that this doppelfassbecher (double-barrel beaker) design also became popular in England in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. We have even seen a number of them for sale, though they've been selling for a lot more than a humble drinks historian could possibly afford. For example, check out this beauty currently available for about the same the price of a ten-year-old VW Jetta:

        

Running into my old friends Wayne Collins and Dave Wondrich is always a good time. There was an added bonus the other night—they were mixing with the new Bols Genever. It's a recreation of a long-lost classic product from the original 1820 recipe book (if you think you can decipher the formula from my photo, I'll send you a high-res version). 

The most important words of the night came when Dave said he'd tried using it where recipes called for gin and it never tasted right. Then he tried using it in place of whiskey, and it worked perfectly. Out here in Ealing, we've been mixing Manhattans with Bokma 5-year for quite some time but never really thought about why it worked until Dave said he'd hit on it, too. Genever's production—malted grain, pot stills—has a lot more in common with whiskey than gin. 

I always loved new make and white dog, the unaged spirit that becomes whisk(e)y after a long rest in a barrel. But it never occurred to me that genever is basically new make flavored with juniper. 

Here's Bols master distiller Piet van Leijenhorst, looking like a proud father:

        

I was searching through eBay.fr for a bar spoon. I decided to try the French word for spoon cuillere. This turned up thousands of listings. Most were boring. Some were interesting (the cuillere glacons ice spoons that appear to predate Kentucky Fried Chicken's spork). And one was astonishing: the cuillere medicament. This 17th or 18th Century French apothecary spoon looked so much like a modern bar spoon I thought it was mis-listed at first.

Then in a reprint of the 1898 Farrow and Jackson catalogue (Thanks Jeff M.!), I found a page offering a choice of a regular bar spoon, or a French mazagran spoon. Mazagran normally refers to coffee-related sundries (cups, spoons) in French, and the name comes from a coffee town in Algeria. But this former apothecary spoon, in service as a coffee spoon according to its name, was being sold to British bartenders as a bar spoon. 

The origins of the bar spoon? Perhaps.

        

 John Glaser caused a bit of uproar among the whisky anoraks* when he made Orangerie, a combination of first rate whisky and orange. So we won't tell them that he's made another batch. And it is good. We've been drinking it with a splash of the water we brought back from Islay. We even made toddies with it (40ml Compass Box Orangerie, 100ml boiling water, manuka honey, and lemon to taste) .

        

I thought about opening this blog with some statement about its purpose. But the purpose is pretty obvious. There's so much we've encountered along the way that might not merit an article or a book, but is still interesting. For example, I saw this at an exhibition called The Art of Drinking at the Victoria and Albert museum last year.