Before we travel back in time, here's a practical gift: the complete ingredient shopping list to build this drink at home. Now, the legend.
The Sea Breeze of today, with vodka, cranberry juice and grapefruit juice, is a modern invention from the early 1980s. But the name is much older: in the 1920s and 1930s, a "Sea Breeze" existed as a gin-based cocktail with grenadine and lemon juice, a very different animal altogether. The modern vodka version rose with the cranberry marketing boom launched by Ocean Spray in the 1970s.
It became a pop-culture symbol in the 1990s thanks to the HBO series "Sex and the City", where it briefly competed with the Cosmopolitan for screen time, and was the favorite cocktail of the show's character Miranda Hobbes. Bright, pink and refreshingly American, the Sea Breeze became a permanent pool-deck classic.
Behind every legendary cocktail there's a well-organized bartender. That's why I recommend a good barman kit like this one on Amazon: it includes everything essential for home bartending, with quality and a fair price. And if you love entertaining, a professional cocktail bar station is the investment that makes every evening feel like a real bar night.