Read time: about 2 minutes. Published 2026-05-01

On our first vacation together, we went to San Juan, Puerto Rico and visited Barrachina, the birthplace of the Piña Colada – maybe.

If you’ve followed our blog since the beginning, you may remember that a vacation with friends to Puerto Rico, where we stayed in Old San Juan, was our first vacation together, and it was unforgettable for many reasons and amazing moments. 

One such moment was when we went to Barrachina for Piña Coladas. On a hot June afternoon, nothing beats sitting in the shade and enjoying a delicious, creamy Piña Colada with friends. It wasn’t the first time having the drink, and certainly not the last, but we still agree it was the best. Maybe part of that was knowing it was the original, and anything else is just a copy.

But was it the first place to offer a Piña Colada? It’s a matter of much debate, which we didn’t know at the time. Just 2 miles away at the Caribe Hilton, there is another claim of being the birthplace of the Piña Colada – and they claim to have made it almost 10 years earlier! Barrachina claims it was created there in 1963, which Caribe Hilton dates theirs to 1954. There’s not much solid evidence either way, so it continues to be hotly debated (especially between the two establishments). 

The two recipes are a bit different, so it’s possible that both bartenders came up with the drink independently, despite the close geography and chronology. And this seems more likely when you learn the truth could be that neither of them actually created the drink themselves!

According to Fred Minnick, a respected author on wine and spirits, in his 2017 book “Rum Curious: The Indispensable Tasting Guide to the World's Spirit”, there were published recipes for the Piña Colada as early as 1928, and again in 1944, with the origin being Havana, Cuba. This makes both Puerto Rico claims a bit dubious and makes us believe both bartenders simply came up with their own variation of the drink, and with almost no one in the area having been to Cuba for the original, the story quickly changed to the drink being completely novel.

Which version is true is hard to say for certain, but we can be sure of a few things – the best Piña Colada we’ve ever had was at Barrachina; we need to go back to Puerto Rico to also try the one at Caribe Hilton to compare the two; and we need to make our way to Havana some day to see how their version fares!

A fun side story we love to share – our friends who vacationed with us had their two young daughters with them, aged 6 and 10. As the adults were all enjoying our Piña Coladas, the older daughter asked if she could have the cherry from her mom’s drink. Without thinking, she gave it to her. As soon as she popped it in her mouth, her face twisted in disgust, and she spit it out. It had been soaked in rum!