Rum Journal: A Pub on the Sand in St John

Above: the Beach Bar in St John

ST JOHN — It’s one of the first things you see when you reach the harbour of Cruz Bay, St John, US Virgin Islands, when you look past the rolling green hills and the crystal-clear turquoise water: a bar.

Just at the end of Wharfside on a tiny beach sits The Beach Bar, the most famous beach bar on this almost impossibly verdant Caribbean island and almost inarguably its best one, too.

This is an institution on St John, a place that draws in everybody for tasty Caribbean pub fare and even better cocktails.

It’s the kind of place that you know, immediately upon entering, is beloved.

Of course, this is the Virgin Islands, meaning it is painkiller country, meaning it would be reckless not to try a painkiller (or more than one).

The painkiller: that off-white rum cocktail made famous by Pusser’s Rum and the Soggy Dollar Bar on Jost Van Dyke can be found at seemingly every beach bar in both the British and United States Virgin Islands.

A tasty blend of rum, cream of coconut, pineapple juice, orange juice and nutmeg, its the perfect cocktail for kicking back and enjoying the vistas one of the Caribbean’s most beautiful places.

And the Beach Bar makes a rather good one: sweet but not too sweet, thanks to the Coco Lopez it uses; powerful in a way that sneaks right up on you.

Here, on the water in St John, it’s the recipe for a perfect Caribbean afternoon.

— CJ