Cocktail · Medium strength
Sex on the Beach
Vodka, peach schnapps, orange, cranberry — the 80s never tasted so unapologetic.
How to order it: Highball, lots of ice, zero pretension. Sometimes you just want the fun one.
Flavor profile
The recipe
- 1½ oz vodka
- ¾ oz peach schnapps
- 2 oz orange juice
- 2 oz cranberry juice
- Highball; orange and cherry
The story
Sex on the Beach is a child of the 1980s, and its precise parentage is appropriately hazy. Its rise tracks the launch of DeKuyper's Peachtree schnapps in 1984, which set off a national peach frenzy; one oft-told story credits a Florida bartender mixing it for spring breakers, the name doing the marketing all by itself. It belongs to the era of brass rails, neon, and drinks named to make ordering them part of the entertainment. It endures partly as nostalgia and partly on merit: peach, orange, and cranberry over vodka is genuinely pleasant, even when ordered with a straight face.
Adjacent pours