Rum Journal: Rincon, Puerto Rico’s Most Famous Cocktail

Above: a Coco Pirata in Rincon (All photos by CJ)

RINCON — Like most famous cocktails, it has a story, a history. It also has more than one name.

Served inside a coconut, it’s the signature drink at Rincón, Puerto Rico’s Villa Cofresi hotel, which has been on the beach in Rincon for more than a half-century.

The drink is called any number of things: El Pirata, Pirata Especial, Pirate Special, the Coco Pirata. But whatever you call it, know this: it’s fantastic.

The ingredients are rather simple: four kinds of rum, evaporated milk, fresh coconut water and a dusting of cinnamon.

One order means more than can fill an ordinary coconut, so you get a coconut’s worth and a plastic cup, too, both of which will disappear before you remember the name of what it was you ordered.

Because when you’re here, above the sand in Rincon, drinking rum out of a coconut, do names really matter?

— CJ