Cherry Blossom

A delicate pink cocktail built on cherry brandy with orange curacao, lemon, and grenadine for a floral, springlike sip.

The Cherry Blossom first appears in print in Harry Craddock's The Savoy Cocktail Book, published in London in 1930, which makes it a genuine pre-war classic rather than a mid-century invention. Craddock's original formula paired brandy with cherry brandy in equal measure, lifted with small accents of curacao, lemon juice, and grenadine — a build in the elaborate, multi-liqueur style that defined golden-age European bar work. Over the following decades the recipe simplified, and the version most consistently reproduced today leads with cherry brandy as the base, keeping the orange liqueur, lemon, and grenadine as bright, balancing accents. The defining ingredient across every version is cherry brandy, most famously Heering Cherry Liqueur, produced by Peter Heering in Copenhagen since the 1820s from dark Danish Stevns cherries macerated with their stones, which lends the drink its signature almond-tinged depth and is the same liqueur that colors the Singapore Sling and the Blood and Sand. The cocktail's name evokes the Japanese sakura, whose pale-pink spring blossoms have been a cultural symbol of Japan for more than a thousand years, and the drink's soft rosy hue — drawn from the cherry liqueur and grenadine — mirrors that fleeting seasonal color.