Koko Kanu 70 cl, 37.5% ABV - Jamaica Coconut Rum

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Pineapple is non-negotiable (unless you’re a maverick, like Conigliaro, but as we’ve established, he’s already been disqualified anyway). 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. Even the great mixologist Tony Conigliaro names it as his guilty pleasure – as if this totally tropical taste were something to be ashamed of. 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. 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.

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.Moore, Larousse and Godwin’s first version all use coconut milk, and Wilson and Godwin’s second an “elegant, cream-free version of the gaudy abomination for self-hating, lactose-intolerant cocktail pseuds”, coconut water, which the former claims gives the drink “a much lighter and more complex flavour”. 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? That said, Conigliaro’s recipe falls at the first hurdle in using cachaça instead of rum, which disqualifies it from the classic colada race. 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.

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. After all, there is nothing inherently naff about pineapple, coconut or rum – and the jury is still out on those parasols. 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.My score here is in relation to other flavoured rums I've tasted, which admittedly isn't a huge range - pineapple, banana, honeycomb. Just as I’m wondering how many different rums it’s decent for one woman to have in her collection, I spot that he has helpfully included instructions on how to make your own coconut rum by fat-washing light rum with coconut oil, which provides surprisingly easy and effective, though it’s a subtlety that would be lost in the classic recipe using coconut milk rather than coconut water.

For the money it represents fantastic value, but even on pure taste alone, this sits above all the other flavoured rums I've tried. 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”). 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! It is fabulous for an elderly lady drinker like myself LOL ' I totally recommend - it tastes a bit like rum Chata .That said, without the cream of coconut, the drink does require some sweetening if it is to mirror the flavour of the original – Wilson’s version is disappointingly thin in flavour in comparison with Godwin’s one with sugar syrup. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative. 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.