Melon-flavored liqueur Midori makes comeback
Have you ever noticed a tall, green bottle of liqueur on the back bar of your local watering hole? If not, look for it on your next night out. This is Midori, the Japanese, melon-flavored liqueur that burst onto the bartending scene in the 1980s and is currently experiencing a renaissance as a cocktail ingredient.
I first encountered Midori when I won a half-empty bottle in a Dirty Santa gift exchange in my junior year of college. At the time, I was very much in the “all alcohol is good alcohol” stage of my life, so I quickly poured the group shots, and we downed what we soon discovered was a sickly sweet liqueur that tasted like a cantaloupe fell into a bug zapper. Thankfully, things have changed.
Midori — which takes its name from the Japanese word for “green” — was invented in Japan in 1964. However, it didn’t make its way to the United States until 1978, when it was launched with an epic party at New York City’s epic Studio 54 nightclub hosted by the cast and crew of the film “Saturday Night Fever.” I would trade a kidney to go back in time and experience that night.
The liqueur’s distinctive flavor comes from two types of melon: the muskmelon, which we typically think of as cantaloupe, and the Yubari melon. All the melons used to flavor Midori are grown exclusively in Japan. Both the muskmelon and the Yubari melon have orange flesh, so green coloring is used to give the liqueur its distinctive Wicked Witch of the West glow.
Over time, as the cocktail industry got more serious, the bright green liqueur fell out of favor as an ingredient among the more “highbrow” bartenders who were driving the nation’s cocktail scene. Though it never fully disappeared from the back bar, it was a rare sight in featured cocktails in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
This changed in 2012 when the Suntory corporation, which owns the brand, changed the recipe. This “new” version of Midori used 20% less artificial additives and was significantly less sweet. (This is part of the decades-long trend of cocktails dialing back the sweetness, but that’s a story for another column.) The new recipe was a hit, and it enjoyed another wave of popularity, one that has — thankfully — only slightly dissipated.
Midori is common in summer cocktail lists, and I encourage you to seek it out. If you don’t see it featured, ask the bartender to make you a Midori sour, a Japanese Slipper, or a Japanese Gin and Tonic.