Seabreeze: A Refreshing Summer Cocktail Delight

The Seabreeze is a stand-out summer cocktail. Relatively new to the classic cocktail list, its origins were formulated in the 1930s towards the end of Prohibition. While at this time the ingredients were gin, apricot brandy, and grenadine, only a few years later, a cranberry cooperative formed into the Ocean Spray brand—and the rest, as they say, is history!

Ocean Spray promoted cranberry juice as a mixer with alcohol, and a new Seabreeze was born. Cranberry juice has since grown in popularity to become a globally recognizable commodity, no small part due to its endless health benefits—not to mention cranberry’s enduring collaboration with vodka.

A slump in cranberry consumption during the 1960s left the Seabreeze temporarily on the shelf, but not for long, as a resurgence in cranberry consumption enabled the Seabreeze to become a staple of the 1970s summer cocktail scene.

A marketing collaboration between Absolut Vodka and Ocean Spray revived the Seabreeze for the 1990s and firmly cemented this cool summer cocktail into the annals of classic cocktails forever.

There are some nice variations on the classic Seabreeze. One of my favorites is the Hawaiian Seabreeze, which substitutes grapefruit juice for pineapple juice. The only downside with the Hawaiian Seabreeze is that pineapple offers less resistance than grapefruit juice, so these can go down way too fast!

As with almost all cocktails, the Seabreeze is perfectly suited to experimentation. I find the dilution of the ice can wash out the Seabreeze a little, so I like to add a little Triple Sec, as it adds depth. Also, I find the added sweetness brings the cocktail to life. For the purist, just leave the Triple Sec out.

The addition of aromatic bitters can also vastly enhance the flavors of the Seabreeze. Orange bitters will, as the name suggests, add a nice hint of orange to the flavor, and Peychaud’s bitters can remove any excess sweetness and add a little depth to the flavor.