Above: the Soggy Dollar Bar (Photos by William Torrillo)

IT WAS one of the hardest choices we’ve had to make all year: deciding what was the best beach bar in the Caribbean for 2013.

Earlier in the year, we named our top 10 favourites in the Caribbean region. But we’ve narrowed it down to one.

Last year, Martinique’s Le Petibonum beat out stiff competition to take home our inaugural Beach Bar of the Year Award. But this year, thanks to the perfect combination of beach, signature cocktail, food and ambiance, we’ve named our winner: the Soggy Dollar Bar on Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands.

The Soggy Dollar always finds itself at or near the top of these lists for a reason — it has turned the art of the beach bar into a science, highlighted by the world-famous Painkiller cocktail, a mix of cream of coconut, orange juice, pineapple juice, dark rum and Grenadian nutmeg.

And the beach on White Bay is among the very best in the region — meaning that once you get there, you’ll almost certainly never want to leave (good thing there’s a hotel on site, then).

And, naturally, Jost Van Dyke is only accessible by boat, meaning it’s a true island oasis.

Congratulations to the Soggy Dollar!

— CJ