Even with a mixer or in a cocktail for someone, I'd give them this over Malibu, but I personally prefer to sip my rums neat, and for me this ranks as one of the easiest sipping rums. could not get it so bought some koko kanu , it is very nice , smooth , I like it lots of ice a double measure tall glass full fat coke 😀 😋. After all, there is nothing inherently naff about pineapple, coconut or rum – and the jury is still out on those parasols. There are two types of people in this world: those who admit to liking piña colada, and pretentious idiots. Moore perspicaciously observes that the thickness of the drink is crucial, describing crushed ice as the ideal, though without a sufficiently powerful blender, she suggests serving the drink in an ice-packed glass instead.

I love the fact that it is so adaptable, have it with pineapple juice or just with some ice and cinnamon on its own!Food52 adds a spritz of lime juice and DeGroff adds Angostura bitters, which makes their piña coladas particularly refreshing, though you may not need either depending on the pineapple juice you use. It is fabulous for an elderly lady drinker like myself LOL ' I totally recommend - it tastes a bit like rum Chata . The perfect blend of white rum and essence of real coconut will transport you to a tropical paradise, even when it’s raining outside. My blender, despite bold claims of an ice function, is somewhat incompetent at breaking the stuff up, but I find a few stress-relieving whacks of a rolling pin works wonders (on the ice, not the blender, though sometimes I am sorely tempted) – and there really is no decent substitute. Even the great mixologist Tony Conigliaro names it as his guilty pleasure – as if this totally tropical taste were something to be ashamed of.

Victoria Moore hits the nail on the head in her book How to Drink: “At some point around the 1980s … piña colada stopped being a drink and became an excruciating razzmatazz of an event guaranteed to arrive at your table like a carnival float, in an obscenely large glass, decked with thrillingly garish paraphernalia such as a fuchsia paper parasol or six. The piña colada: naff or not – and even if you are a fan, is it one of those drinks that’s strictly reserved for holidays? In any case, it seems a shame to use a mild-flavoured light rum – it has no chance against coconut and pineapple – but the dark one in DeGroff’s recipe feels too heavy for a drink that is crying out to be sipped on a sunlounger, so I’m going to use golden rum. I like it with lime juice, ice and a bit of sugar with a mint leaf on top for a lovely refreshing drink. Works perfectly in summer cocktails but I just discovered on a rainy, slightly cold summer evening how nice it also works in a hot chocolate - definitely one to keep in mind for later in the year!Fellow bartender Dale DeGroff says the trick to making a great piña colada is to use both light and dark rum, Moore goes for the golden kind, telling readers to use “a richer, more aged rum if you like the sunny flavour to show through”, or “a white rum if you prefer the coconut and pineapple to dominate” – which is exactly what Larousse Cocktails, Food52 and Jason Wilson of the Washington Post opt for. Moore reckons “it’s not essential to use fresh fruit to make a decent piña colada, though it certainly adds to the drama if you do” so I try her recipe with tinned pineapple rings, and save the fresh stuff for Wilson’s recipe. Stir the coconut milk to make sure it hasn’t separated into water and cream, then add to the ice along with the rum and pineapple juice. Richard Godwin, meanwhile, gives two piña colada recipes in his new book The Spirits, one using light rum and one using a mixture of dark and coconut rum (“the proper stuff, like Koko Kanu, not Malibu”).

Wilson says that, despite the name, which means “strained pineapple”, it’s easier to keep the drink from separating if you don’t bother, but his would be better served with a spoon than a straw.

Also sign me up for newsletters so I can get special offers, recommendations, and expert advice to my inbox! All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.

The cream of coconut is unpleasantly gloopy, while the coconut water is too subtle – it works in Godwin’s second version, because it’s a much shorter drink, but I can hardly taste it in Wilson’s drink. For the money it represents fantastic value, but even on pure taste alone, this sits above all the other flavoured rums I've tried. Using enough ice to fill your glass to two-thirds, whizz in a blender until crushed, or place the ice in a clean tea towel and whack repeatedly with a rolling pin, rounders bat or similar, then put in a cocktail shaker.

My score here is in relation to other flavoured rums I've tasted, which admittedly isn't a huge range - pineapple, banana, honeycomb.