Melon Martini

A Melon Martini is a shaken vodka cocktail made with Absolut Vodka, green melon liqueur and simple syrup, fine strained into a chilled martini glass and garnished with a skewered watermelon wedge.

It belongs to the fresh fruit martini family – alongside the Appletini, the Lemon Drop Martini and the Pear Martini – a group of cocktails that share the martini glass and very little else with a traditional gin or vodka martini. The melon liqueur gives it that distinctive, vivid green color and a sweet, tropical melon character that’s hard to place but impossible to ignore.

Sweet, fruity, spirit-forward. With simple syrup combined with green melon liqueur, there’s a bold, candy-like melon sweetness that’s softened by the clean, smooth character of Absolut Vodka.

It’s sweeter than most martinis. It’s also greener than most martinis. Neither of these things is a problem.

The Melon Martini owes its existence largely to the arrival of green melon liqueur in the United States in the late 1970s – a vividly colored, Japanese-inspired liqueur that quickly inspired a wave of melon-flavored cocktails throughout the 1980s and 90s – from the Melon Ball and the Japanese Slipper to an early version of the Sex on the Beach that used green melon liqueur instead of peach schnapps.

The Melon Martini emerged as part of the broader fresh fruit martini movement of the late 1990s and early 2000s – a period when bartenders discovered that putting almost anything in a martini glass and calling it a martini was both commercially viable and, more often than not, actually delicious.

The Melon Martini is one of the easier cocktails to make well. But to make a good one, keep these things in mind:

• Chill your glass
  Place your martini glass in the freezer for at least 30 minutes before serving. The Melon Martini is a drink best served ice cold – a warm glass is the fastest way to ruin it.
• Double strain
  Always double strain using a Hawthorne strainer and a fine mesh strainer — it gives you a clean, smooth pour and an unbroken surface in the glass. Here’s how to double strain and why it matters.
• Don’t overdo the simple syrup
  The melon liqueur is already sweet. Stick to the 10ml in the recipe and resist the temptation to add more. You can always add sweetness; you can’t take it away.

• Melon Martini with lime juice
  Add 15ml of fresh lime juice to the recipe for a sharper, more citrus-forward version. The lime cuts through the sweetness of the melon liqueur and adds a bright, tart edge that makes the whole drink feel considerably more sophisticated. Highly recommended if you find the original a touch too sweet.
• Try it with Absolut Lime
  Add lime juice and then swap Absolut Vodka for Absolut Lime and the citrus character gets a further boost – the lime flavor of the vodka working alongside the melon liqueur in a way that feels made for each other.

With its unmissable green color, the Melon Martini is already doing a lot visually – the garnish just needs to keep up.

• Glassware
  A chilled martini glass. The color of this drink deserves to be shown off properly and there’s no better glass to do this than a martini glass.
• Watermelon wedge
  Skewer a watermelon wedge and place it directly in the glass. It ties back to the melon character of the drink, adds some contrasting color and gives the whole thing a slightly more dramatic finish than it strictly needs. Which is exactly right for a neon green cocktail.