Lychee Martini Recipe

The Cocktail Society's Lychee Martini Recipe. Learn how to make a Lychee Martini with our expert Mixologists.
Lychee-martini-recipe

Method

Shaken

Glass

Martini

Category

Vodka

Lychee Martini Recipe Ingredients

25ml Vodka
25ml Lychee Liqueur
50ml Lychee Juice
10ml Lemon Juice
5ml Gomme

How to Make a Lychee Martini Cocktail

Add all ingredients into a shaker. Shake all ingredients hard and strain into a martini glass.

The Society Pro Tip: some recipes call for fresh Lychee fruit to be placed in the glass as a garnish.

If you decide to go for this, we’d suggest buying canned Lychee – it will already be pitted, saving you time and energy.

Garnish

Lemon fan & Edible Flower

Tell Us About The Lychee Martini Recipe

Sake Bar Decibel in New York City, one potential origin of the Lychee Martini Recipe
Decibel still serves the Lychee Martini to this day. Source: @sakebar.decibel

The Lychee Martini was came to popularity as part of the cocktail renaissance in the 1990s.

It’s hard to pin point where exactly the drinks originated, with several bars claiming to have invented the drink.

Some date the origin of the Lychee Martini to around 1993, when New York bar Decibel opened in the East Village.

Decibel served a vodka martini with lychee syrup, a drink transplanted from their Tokyo location.

Others say the cocktail was created by bartender Han-Jae Park at Korean nightspot Clay, also in New York. Legend has it that Park created the drink for bartenders who had finished their shift.

But other reports date the drink as far back as the mid 1980s.

Whenever it was created, the Lychee Martinis Asian influence is clear. The late ’80s and early ’90s were the era of fusion cuisine, with a merging of Asian and Western cuisines.

Cocktails were no different, with bartenders throwing ingredients together to see what stuck.

The Lychee Martini is a popular cocktail due to its clean palate and fresh, fruity taste.

It works very well as a Lychee only cocktail or mixed with other complimentary fruits such as raspberries.

The popularity of the drink continued to grow in the 2000s, with the Guardian noting how the drink popped up in up and coming areas like Hoxton in London.

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