This New Breed of Pineapple Tastes Just Like a Piña Colada

Dole just made enjoying a Piña Colada that much easier. This month, Dole Food Company launched a brand new, non-GMO pineapple that tastes just like the classic frozen cocktail.

Dubbed the Colada Royale, this creation might look like any old pineapple on the outside. It has the fruit’s signature golden skin and a spiky green top, but cut into it, and you’ll see a different story. Rather than the yellow coloring of traditional pineapple, the inside of the Colada Royale is creamy white, more reminiscent of a well-made Piña Colada.

While it might just seem like a fun new innovation to hit the market for tropical cocktail fans, it took the Dole Food Company over 15 years to fully research and develop the product. The roots of the idea trace back to the early 2000s when the fresh produce R&D team set out to create a new variety of pineapple that was more indulgent and had pops of other tropical fruit flavors.

The team developed Colada Royale at La Ceiba in Honduras, the oldest pineapple farm in Latin America, with the help of Roberto Young, a Honduran native who started working with Dole in 1997. After being hired to work for the company, Young’s very first assignment was to manage Dole’s pineapple-breeding program, which he still oversees today.

“I’m proud of my work at Dole and being able to help bring a pineapple like the Colada Royale to the world,” Young said in a press release. “It can take 10, 12, or even 15 years to create a new hybrid through natural processes — and only a very small percentage of the thousands we try ever make it to market. So the Colada Royale is special. It will be my legacy.”

Flavor wise, the pineapple is described as a balanced combination of pineapple and coconut, i.e. Piña Colada. But the fruit does more than just deliver a tropical medley of flavors, it also has added nutritional value. According to the brand, the Colada Royale contains two and a half times more vitamin B6 than a standard pineapple.

“Our new Colada Royale Pineapple is not just a novelty or publicity gimmick; it’s Dole’s long-term strategy for getting more people to embrace the tropical majesty of pineapples with a luxurious new taste,” Dole’s director of communications Bil Goldfield remarked. “It becomes our premium fresh pineapple experience and the centerpiece of Dole’s quasquicentennial celebration.”

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