It was 1985, and the boomboxes of Madeira, a Portuguese island off the northwestern coast of Africa, were blasting Elton John’s “Nikita.”
Oh, Nikita, you will never know
Anything about my home
I’ll never know how good it feels to hold you
Nikita, I need you so
Specifically, the song was dominating the radio at one particular bar in the fishing port of Câmara de Lobos. Legend has it that in 1985, a bartender there named Marcelino created a bold new drink: a combination of pineapple, ice cream (or perhaps pineapple ice cream), beer and wine, which he christened the Nikita. The drink, like the song, was a hit, and today is available across Madeira.
We don’t know Marcelino’s exact impetus for blending these disparate ingredients, but it’s fair to assume that the bartender, who had recently returned from Brazil, was trying to create something along the lines of the batida, or perhaps a twist on the Piña Colada. But why did he decide to name his sweet, tropical-leaning concoction after a Cold War–era keyboard ballad about a briefly glimpsed East German border guard?
Forty years after the release of “Nikita,” I was in Câmara de Lobos, hoping to make sense of this odd drink. The village is incredibly beautiful, a port edged by rocky walls that rise to a steep basin carpeted green with banana trees. It’s also an important place for indigenous drink culture: The poncha, Madeira’s most famous cocktail, was allegedly invented here, and the pier was buzzing with bars serving local mixed drinks. I headed to the origin.
Marcelino is said to have invented the Nikita at a bar called Farol Verde. Today, the place is known as A Casa do Farol, and a sign above the entrance proclaims: “The Original Nikita Since 1985.” But these days Marcelino is long gone, the business having changed owners in 2014, and the space has more of a restaurant vibe. I ordered a Nikita, and into a pitcher went two generous scoops of pineapple ice cream, a trickle of white wine from a box and a scant splash of beer. He mixed these with the muddler-like tool known affectionately on Madeira as the caralhinho, or “little dick,” and poured the drink into a small mug, garnishing it with a single cube of ice. The drink had a pale yellow color, and was cool and refreshing but unabashedly sugary, the cloying sweetness rendering the alcohol essentially nonexistent. After a couple sips, I headed across the street.
Nikita
Madeira’s tropical, float-like drink.
At my next stop, a bar called Sete Mares, I received a crash course in the Nikita, including its N/A version. Into one glass, the bartender poured the alcohol-free version, a Portuguese pineapple soda mixed with pineapple ice cream, which I would come to learn is also common on the island. For the second glass, he combined the same ice cream, a teaspoon of sugar, a tiny glass of draught Coral (a type of local lager) and a generous splash of vinho verde (Portugal’s “green” wine), mixing them with the muddler (an electric blender, he said, will render the drink “too fluffy”). The boozy Nikita was surprisingly balanced—the acidity of the wine and pineapple and the bitterness of the beer holding all that ice cream in check—and pleasantly refreshing. “The flavors should come together in a way that nothing stands out,” the bartender told me.
I felt I was starting to grasp the Nikita: Alcohol was optional. It was balanced, if a bit sweet. It contained three ingredients. And it was inevitably cool and refreshing. But over my next few days on Madeira, I came to see that no two bars made the drink in the same way.
At Baú dos Reis, a roadside bar dwarfed by the mountains of inland Madeira, the bartender described the Nikita as “a drink for everybody, even kids,” referring to the alcohol-free version. I requested an adult Nikita and she asked if I wanted beer or wine. “Both,” I replied, not having realized I had a choice.
On a different day, I learned that pineapple wasn’t the only game in town. At Filhos D’ Mar, a bar seemingly dedicated to native son Cristiano Ronaldo, I ordered a Nikita. The bartender’s response was, “What kind?” At bars across the island, there are strawberry, tangerine and even kiwi Nikitas. He suggested passion fruit, and I was given a Nikita in which the standard pineapple ice cream/beer/wine combo was supplemented with a bonus hit of zest and aroma, the fluorescent orange flecks also providing the drink with some visual flair.
That was my first example of Nikita maximalism, and it was delicious. But my order at Taberna da Poncha, one of Madeira’s most famous bars, went in the polar opposite direction: a couple scoops of pineapple ice cream hastily muddled with a glug of beer. It was sweet and icy, more dessert than drink.
On my last day on Madeira, I drove to Venda do Sócio, a bar clinging to a steep hillside on the island’s southeastern coast. A venda is a particularly Madeiran institution that functions as both a bar and the local bodega, a place where bottles of booze share space with household goods such as potatoes and shampoo. I ordered a Nikita, and the drink was so vibrant and fruity, I felt compelled to ask the bartender if he had used fresh pineapple rather than the ubiquitous pineapple ice cream. His response was to point at a freezer case stuffed with ice cream bars.
At that point, I decided to stop asking questions, and, reminded of a line in Elton John’s song—Nikita, I need you so—I ordered one more to simply enjoy the bizarre drink.
