There. There Wolf. There Castle.

It had to be done. Why am I dropping lines from a classic movie right off the bat? You all know this has to be drink related by now right? Yeah, you do. I was listening to my Halloween playlist on Spotify when Warren Zevon’s Werewolves of London came on. The line “I saw a werewolf drinking a Pina Colada at Trader Vic’s” inspired me to check, and it was true. I haven’t made a Pina Colada here before. So clearly that needed to be rectified.

Not having Trader Vic’s recipe at hand, I went looking for a recipe and found one that I thought looked kind of suspect based on the minimal amount of ingredients. So, I ran it by my friend who is a bartender at a Tiki bar near me. He was….less than impressed.

Yeah, so needless to say, I didn’t use the first result I found, and went with my friend’s bar’s version: His is

.5 oz. Lime Juice

3.5 oz. Pineapple juice

2 oz. Coco Lopez

2 oz. Puerto Rican white rum

Now for the prep, I was a bit lazy and decided I didn’t want to break out the giant blender, so I decided to break up some ice cubes, and add the broken ice to a metal cocktail shaker. I added all the ingredients and used a stick blender to break up the ice and mix it all together. I pre-crushed the ice just to break it up a bit to make the blending easier.

Ok so I know that isn’t a white rum. I finished my supply of white Puerto Rican rum, and I decided to use Bacardi 10 for the one on the left. Mrs. Sharkbait requested one, but with the booze turned down to a half ounce. In an experiment, I broke out the other suitable white rum I had on hand: Wray and Nephew over proof Jamaican rum. Yes, not Puerto Rican, but other than the Rhum Agricole I have, which I don’t think would work here at all, I had no other options.

Anyway, the nose has a lot of lime, and traces of coconut and pineapple. I’m impressed that all the other ingredients can shine through. I didn’t get any rum scent from Mrs. Sharkbait’s, which isn’t a surprise since I toned it down. But I didn’t get any from my high octane version either. Frankly, I’m OK with that. Since I don’t think the rum is supposed to be the main attraction here.

The sip starts out with a nice mixture of all the ingredients. The rum flavor is particularly mild, and it doesn’t let up the entire sip. The overproof rum isn’t a detriment to the flavor palate at work here, which is a bit of a relief. The lime and the coconut see to that. Speaking of those, they are quite pronounced here as well. The pineapple and the coconut cream combine to give a nice mouth feel. It’s thick, but not so thick that you feel like you need to “chew” the sip. It abates pretty quickly at least, so it doesn’t preclude you from wanting another sip soon after finishing.

Speaking of, the finish is excellent. The flavors all working together in harmony to give this a well balanced flavor. As mentioned, therl mouth feel of the imulsified cream of coconut and pineapple goes away, but a little bit of the lime sticks around, but I don’t hate it. I think it adds to the next sip actually.

I clearly need to make these more often. Mrs. Sharkbait absolutely crushed hers, even with the half ounce of rum in it. Meanwhile my over poof version is still very drinkable, despite the higher booze content. I recommend the stick blender method I used (if you have one) if you’re only doing a couple of these. If you need to mix for a bigger group, go ahead and batch up and break out the real blender. Either way, make your hair perfect and have a Pina Colada this weekend.

(Banner image courtesy Matthew Tetrault Photography)