Highballs and long drinks · Vodka · IBA official
Peach up front, orange juice in the middle, tart cranberry at the end: the flavours line up as neatly as the colours in the glass. It is sweet but not heavy, and it takes less than a minute to build.
1¼ oz
vodkae.g. Absolut · Smirnoff · Grey Goose · Ketel One · Belvedere
¾ oz
peach schnappse.g. Archers · DeKuyper · Bols · Giffard
1¼ oz
orange juice freshly squeezed
1¼ oz
cranberry juice
Garnish: Orange slice · Ice: Ice cubes
Sex on the Beach
Sweet and fruity with ripe peach, juicy orange and a tart cranberry finish. Light and easy drinking.
Sex on the Beach is a child of the 1980s, the decade when peach schnapps arrived on American back bars and fruity vodka highballs ruled holiday resorts. The best known origin story says a bartender in Florida created it in 1987 for a contest run by a schnapps distributor, naming it after the two things spring-break visitors came for.
That story is hard to verify, and similar drinks with vodka, peach and cranberry circulated under other names at the time. What is certain is that the name made it famous, and that it outlasted most of its 1980s peers.
Despite its reputation as a holiday drink, it earned a place on the IBA list of contemporary classics.
The IBA version uses vodka, peach schnapps, orange juice and cranberry juice.
Yes. It is on the IBA list of contemporary classics.
It loses its main flavour. As a stopgap, use peach nectar with a little more vodka.
The perfect sound
Fruity fun with a wink.
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