14 retro cocktails
- Hannah Guinness
Published: June 22, 2022 at 3:46 PM
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From classic disco drinks to kitsch tropical tipples, here's our pick of the best old-school cocktails
Easy drinking and crowd pleasing, retro cocktails are great for parties and for adding a little fun to cocktail hour. We've got plenty of retro sweet cocktails such as piña coladas and tequila sunrises, alongside retro Christmas cocktails like the snowball, and plenty of other kitsch favourites including blue lagoons, grasshoppers and more. Now try our tea cocktails and mocktails.
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Chill your drinks in style with our cocktail ice cubes guide, and make sure your home bar is fully equipped with our pick of the best cocktail accessories.
Easy retro cocktail recipes
Piña colada
Transport yourself to the tropics with our perfect piña colada recipe. Creamy, fruity and delightfully retro, this drink of coconut cream, white rum and pineapple is perfect for summer sipping. You’ll need a blender for this recipe – and make sure you don’t use too much ice as this will make the cocktail watery.
Purple rain
This retro cocktail gets it eye-catching colour from a combination of blue curaçao and grenadine.
Woo woo
Stir up this classic vodka cocktail at your next get-together – you only need four ingredients.
Tequila sunrise
This easy-drinking, kitsch tequila cocktail looks very striking and can be made in just two minutes. Just make sure you serve the drink unmixed as that's the key to those all-important 'sunrise' layers.
Sex on the beach
Make this classic vodka cocktail with just a handful of ingredients and our simple recipe – it's a citrussy serve for sunny days
Blue lagoon
Who doesn't love a blue cocktail? Maximise your holiday vibes with this vibrant, sweet and fruity drink.
Long island iced tea
For a cocktail that features five different spirits – gin, vodka, rum, tequila and triple sec – this drink is surprisingly smooth and easy drinking.
Cosmopolitan
This classic 90s cocktail – made famous by a certain HBO series – is deliciously tangy and fruity, and needs just four ingredients to make.
French martini
Emerging in the late 80s and 90s, the French martini exemplifies the era’s vogue for fruity and sweet vodka cocktails.
Brandy alexander
Made with crème de cacao, cream and brandy, this decadent dessert cocktail makes for a special after-dinner treat.
Grasshopper
One for fans of mint chocolate, this retro, three-ingredient drink is a great dessert cocktail or festive party tipple. To make it even more special, swap the cream for vanilla or mint chocolate chip ice cream and whizz everything together in a blender until smooth for a delicious boozy pudding.
Classic snowball
Zesty lemonade and creamy advocaat shouldn't go together but they work brilliantly in this classic festive cocktail. Don't skip the lime juice as this stops the drink from being too cloying.
White russian
So called because vodka was the primary ingredient, the white russian enjoyed a period of popularity during the disco years of the 1970s before fading into obscurity. That is until the release of The Big Lebowski in 1998, where it was the go-to drink for Jeff Bridges' The Dude, who drinks nine of them throughout the film. To make this recipe vegan, substitute the cream for your favourite dairy-free single cream. We like using oat-based ones best.
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Carajillo
With its roots in 19th-century Spain, this cocktail is now popular across Latin America, particularly in Mexico City. A mixture of chilled espresso coffee, tequilla and a vanilla-forward Spanish liqueur, if you’re a fan of espresso martinis then you’ll love this.
Authors
Hannah GuinnessSenior sub editor and drinks writer
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