There’s something oddly comforting about vintage drinks adverts.
Perhaps it’s because they sell us a version of summer that feels slower than our own. Nobody is checking their phone. Nobody is photographing their meal before taking a bite. There are no wellness routines, productivity hacks or reminders to stay hydrated. Instead, the beaches are never crowded, the lakes perfectly still, the gardens permanently bathed in late-afternoon sunshine. Every bottle seems chilled, every parasol casts just enough shade, and there is always time for one more drink before the day slips into evening.
Of course, they weren’t documenting reality. They were selling aspiration.
Yet, looking back through decades of summer drinks advertising, it’s striking how many of those aspirations still feel familiar. We still long for lazy lunches that stretch into the evening. We still romanticise picnics by the sea, barbecues with friends and the first chilled bottle opened after a long day in the sun. The products may have changed, but the fantasy remains remarkably consistent.
This photo essay explores some of our favourite vintage summer drinks advertisements, not simply as pieces of graphic design, but as small windows into the way different generations imagined leisure, hospitality and the rituals of summer itself.
Summer As Place: The Mediterranean Riviera
If there is one place that defined summer drinking in the twentieth century, it was the Riviera.
From the French Côte d’Azur to Italy’s Ligurian coast, drinks companies repeatedly returned to the same sun-drenched landscapes. Beaches curve around impossibly blue bays, parasols offer shade from the afternoon sun, and every bottle promises not simply refreshment, but a slower, more glamorous way of life.
The Balzola Aperitivo poster is perhaps the purest example. Rather than focusing on the drink itself, it places the viewer above Alassio, looking out across one of Italy’s most fashionable seaside resorts.
Campari took a different approach, reducing the beach to its simplest symbols: a parasol, warm sand and a flash of Mediterranean blue. By stripping away everything else, the umbrella itself became shorthand for escape.
Cinzano continued the story through Italy’s colourful beach huts. Even the small phrase al mare (“to the sea”) says everything.
Even Perrier, despite not being an alcoholic drink, borrowed the very same visual language. Its poster frames a quiet beach through an open doorway, as though simply opening a bottle offers a passage to the coast. The condensation-covered bottle reinforces the promise of cool refreshment, while the beach hut and French flag subtly anchor the scene on the Riviera. Here, the destination itself becomes part of the product.
Together, these posters reveal something fascinating. They aren’t simply advertisements for drinks, but for the Mediterranean dream. Long before affordable air travel brought millions to the Riviera each summer, brands invited consumers to imagine themselves there, one glass at a time.
Summer As Culture: The American Dream
Yet the Riviera was only one version of summer. Thousands of miles away, drinks companies were painting an entirely different picture. For many Americans in the 1950s and 1960s, the ideal summer wasn’t found on the Mediterranean but was shaped by post-war suburban prosperity: weekends at the lake, backyard barbecues, national parks and family road trips.
Hamm’s transported drinkers to sparkling lakes and pine forests, where the promise wasn’t glamour but tranquillity.
Schlitz, meanwhile, traded café terraces and coastlines for fishing trips, barbecue grills and afternoons spent outdoors with family and friends.
These weren’t adverts about escaping everyday life for an exotic destination. They celebrated leisure much closer to home, where the perfect summer was found in familiar places rather than far-flung ones.
Together, they reveal that while summer may be universal, our idea of the perfect summer has always been shaped by where we live.
Summer As Identity: Sex (& Sophistication) Sells
By the 1970s, drinks advertising underwent a subtle but significant shift.
Earlier adverts had sold beaches, gardens and lakes. Now they sold the people who inhabited them and, by extension, the person you might become with the right drink in your hand. The bottle itself became almost incidental.
Smirnoff’s poolside campaigns are ostensibly about vodka, yet the eye is drawn first to bronzed bodies, flirtatious glances and luxurious hotel settings.
Canadian Club follows a similar formula, albeit with a little less subtlety. Here, the drink becomes a prop in a carefully staged fantasy of youth, attractiveness and all out confidence.
Even Campari’s Simply a Matter of Good Taste campaign is less interested in the aperitif than in the man drinking it: relaxed, confident and quietly sophisticated as the Mediterranean stretches out behind him. The bottle sits almost unnoticed in the corner of the frame.
The message was no longer simply that the drink tasted refreshing. It was that it signalled something about you. These brands promised effortless cool, understated confidence and a life that seemed permanently bathed in late-afternoon sunshine. The men were worldly and self-assured, the women glamorous and flirtatious. To buy the drink was to buy into that identity.
It’s a formula that feels strikingly familiar today. Modern drinks campaigns still revolve around beautiful people in beautiful places, selling aspiration as much as alcohol. The fashions may have changed, but the promise remains remarkably similar: the right drink won’t just complement your summer, it might just make you the sort of person everyone else wants to spend it with.
Enjoyed this trip down memory lane? Then you’ll love our Halloween drinks vintage ads photo essay