13 retro cocktails

Blue lagoon cocktail in glass with cherry

13 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.

Three different shaped cocktail glasses filled with a purple drink, ice cubes and lime wedges on a blue background

Woo woo

Stir up this classic vodka cocktail at your next get-together – you only need four ingredients.

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Two pink cocktails in tall glasses garnished with a slice of lime

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.

An amber-coloured cocktail in a tall glass next to a silver cocktail shaker with wedges of lime

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.

A blue cocktail garnished with a sprig of green mint

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.

A bright blue background with a long glass filled with a creamy snowball cocktail garnished with a red cherry

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.