Aruba

Aruba is technically abroad, but it never quite felt that way to Heineken. The island sits 29 kilometres off the Venezuelan coast, a flat, windswept piece of limestone in the southern Caribbean that has been part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands since 1636. When a Heineken delivery reached Aruba in 1953, it was Dutch beer arriving on Dutch territory — less an export than a domestic supply run that happened to cross an ocean.
The island has no brewery and never has — with a population that hovered around 60,000 for most of the 20th century and freshwater scarce enough to require desalination, local production was never viable. What Aruba has always had is tourists. The near-perfect weather, white sand beaches and duty-free shopping made it one of the Caribbean's most visited islands long before the cruise ship era, and the steady flow of American, Dutch and Venezuelan visitors created demand for imported European beer that Heineken was well-positioned to meet.
Today Heineken Lager is widely available across Oranjestad and the hotel strip along Eagle Beach — in supermarkets, hotel bars and the restaurants that line the waterfront. Import-only, no local brand, no joint venture. Just the green bottle, at home on Dutch soil, as it has been since at least 1930.