Paradise
The Paradise is gin, apricot brandy and orange juice, and it is one of the few pre-war cocktails that has survived without anyone feeling the need to rescue it. It appears in Harry Craddock's Savoy Cocktail Book in 1930 and in most of the bar books that followed, and the proportions have barely moved since. Thirty millilitres of gin to twenty of apricot brandy and fifteen of orange juice is a shorter, spirit-led build than the fruit in it suggests. The apricot is the pivot: it brings stone-fruit sweetness and a faint kernel bitterness that meets the gin's juniper rather than smothering it, and the orange juice is there to lengthen and brighten rather than to make a fruit drink. It is the sort of cocktail that reads badly on paper and works in the glass, which is roughly the story of the entire 1930s canon.
Glassware: Coupe Glass
Garnish:
Ingredients
30ml
A London Dry, and the structural half of the drink despite being poured shorter than instinct suggests. Its juniper is what the apricot leans against, and a soft or floral gin leaves the glass tasting of liqueur alone.
20ml
An apricot liqueur rather than a distillate, which is what a recipe of this era means by the name. A good one brings stone fruit with a faint kernel bitterness underneath; the cheap orange sort brings boiled sweets and nothing else.
15ml
Squeezed to order, and a deliberately short measure. It lengthens the drink and brightens the apricot without leading, and at any larger volume it flattens the whole build into something that tastes like breakfast.
Instructions
Chill a coupe in the freezer or with ice water.
Squeeze the orange juice immediately before building the drink.
Add the gin, apricot brandy and orange juice to a shaker with cubed ice.
Shake hard for 10 to 12 seconds.
Double strain into the chilled coupe and serve without garnish.
Source: the IBA (Official IBA specification). Last checked 13 August 2026.
Expert Tip
Buy the apricot brandy carefully, because the drink is mostly it. What the recipe wants is an apricot liqueur with real fruit and a faint kernel bitterness behind it, not the sticky orange bottle sold under the same name in supermarkets. Rothman & Winter and Giffard are the references, and the difference between one of those and the cheap sort is the difference between a cocktail and a boiled sweet. Keep the orange short. Fifteen millilitres is a quarter of the glass and every version of this drink that has ever tasted like breakfast got there by pouring more. It is a lengthener, not a base. Shake it hard. The orange juice needs the aeration to integrate properly, and an under-shaken Paradise starts separating in the glass before it reaches the table.
Flavour Profile
Apricot Brandy
The ingredient the drink turns on, and one of the most misunderstood bottles on a back bar.
Apricot brandy in a cocktail recipe almost never means brandy. It means an apricot liqueur — a sweetened, flavoured spirit, often on a neutral or brandy base — rather than a distillate of apricots, which is a different and much drier thing usually sold as apricot eau de vie. A recipe from this era asking for apricot brandy wants the liqueur. Rothman & Winter and Giffard are the reference bottles; the sticky orange supermarket versions will make the drink taste of boiled sweets.
What the good ones bring is stone fruit with a faint almond bitterness from the kernel, and that bitterness is what stops the drink cloying.
Why the Orange Is Short
Fifteen millilitres of orange juice in a sixty-five millilitre drink is a quarter of the glass, and it is deliberately restrained.
Orange juice is sweet, low in acid and heavy in body, and at a larger measure it flattens everything around it — which is exactly what has happened to every version of this drink that tastes like a breakfast cocktail. At this proportion it lengthens the build, brightens the apricot and adds just enough acidity to keep the liqueur honest, without ever taking the lead.
Squeeze it to order. In a drink this short there is nowhere for carton juice to hide, and the pasteurised sweetness is precisely the wrong direction.
The Savoy Version
Craddock's 1930 entry gives the drink in the fractions the Savoy uses throughout: proportions of a glass rather than measures in millilitres.
That format is why period recipes look inconsistent when converted — a third of a small 1930s cocktail glass is not the same volume as a third of a modern one, and drinks from this era are frequently reported as being either much stronger or much weaker than intended. The official specification's 30/20/15 is a modern reading of the same ratio, sized for a glass people actually own.
It is worth knowing that the shape of the drink is ninety years old even where the numbers are not.
How to Serve It
Shaken hard, double strained into a chilled coupe, with no garnish.
The official specification lists none and it is right: the drink is already aromatic, and an orange twist would simply repeat what the juice is doing. Shake it properly — the orange juice needs the aeration to integrate, and an under-shaken Paradise separates in the glass within a minute.
Serve it before dinner or early in an evening. It is short, sweetish and moderately strong, and it does the job an aperitif does without any of the bitterness that usually implies.
The Spirit
Apricot BrandyStone fruit in liqueur form: the apricot brandy of the classic canon, sweeter than its name and busier than its reputation.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a Paradise cocktail?
Gin, apricot brandy and orange juice, shaken and served up. The official specification is 30ml, 20ml and 15ml respectively. It appears in Harry Craddock’s Savoy Cocktail Book in 1930 and the proportions have barely changed since.
Is apricot brandy actually brandy?
Usually not. In a cocktail recipe of this era it means an apricot liqueur — a sweetened, flavoured spirit — rather than a distillate of apricots, which is a drier product normally sold as apricot eau de vie. The liqueur is what the recipe wants.
Why is there so little orange juice?
Because orange juice is sweet, low in acid and heavy, and at any larger measure it flattens the drink into something that tastes like breakfast. Fifteen millilitres lengthens the build and brightens the apricot without ever leading it.
Does a Paradise need a garnish?
The official specification lists none, and it is right. The drink is already aromatic from the gin and the apricot, and an orange twist would only repeat what the juice is doing. Serve it clean in a chilled coupe.
Where this one sits
Recipe by Jerry Can Spirits
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