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Midori Sour

Midori melon liqueur shaken with lemon and a touch of sweetness — a vivid green, easy-drinking 1980s classic.

Difficulty
easy
Prep time
4 min
Strength
6% ABV
Glassware
Rocks glass
Base
liqueur led
Serves
1

Ingredients

  • Midori (melon liqueur)
    45ml
  • Fresh lemon juice
    25ml
  • Simple syrupoptional

    Optional — Midori is already quite sweet

    10ml

Garnish: Lemon wheel, Maraschino cherry

Scale for a party

Method

  1. Add the Midori, lemon juice and simple syrup (if using) to a shaker with ice.
  2. Shake hard for 10–15 seconds until well chilled.
  3. Strain into a rocks glass over fresh ice.
  4. Garnish with a lemon wheel and a cherry.

Equipment

Don't have everything? Here's what works instead.

  • Cocktail shaker

    Household swap: A jar with a tight-fitting lid, shaken firmly.

  • Hawthorne strainer

    Household swap: A slotted spoon held over the shaker while pouring.

Missing an ingredient?

Each swap below says what it changes and how to correct for it, so you can decide whether you are making this drink or a neighbouring one.

  • Instead of Midori

    Best substitute: Triple Sec

    This is the base in this drink.

    Quantity: Use the same amount

    Flavour impact: Triple sec swaps out Midori's distinctive honeydew-melon sweetness for a cleaner orange flavour — a very different drink that only mimics the format and colour.

    What changes

    Expect less sweetness, more intensity and more strength. Still a good drink, and a slightly different one.

    Sweetness ↓
    Less sweetness leaves the acid and the spirit more exposed, so the drink will taste sharper and drier than it should.
    Intensity ↑
    A more intensely flavoured ingredient will start to dominate the components around it.
    Strength ↑
    Triple Sec is 30% ABV against 20%. A stronger bottle raises the alcohol in the finished drink and, with it, the perceived dryness and heat.
    Character
    Both are sweet, and you lose melon, fruity and vivid, and you gain orange, clean and citrusy. Numbers can't see this: two ingredients can be identically sour and still smell nothing alike.

    To correct for it

    • Add a little more syrup, a small amount at a time, until the edges come back together.
    • Scale it back by a third and let the other ingredients hold their share.
    • Pour a little less, or add slightly more dilution, to land where the recipe intended.
    ExperimentalNot a true flavour substitute — mainly useful if Midori genuinely isn't available.Shifts the drink

Make it better

  • Taste before adding the simple syrup — Midori is already sweet, and some prefer this drink with lemon juice alone.
  • Shake hard and briefly; over-diluting mutes the melon flavour Midori is prized for.
  • Use fresh lemon juice; bottled juice makes the sweetness taste flatter and less balanced.

Rescue this drink

Too sweet
Skip the simple syrup and add a little extra lemon juice instead.
Too sour
Add the simple syrup, a teaspoon at a time, to round it out.
Tastes flat
Use fresh lemon juice rather than bottled, and shake hard and briefly rather than long and slow.
Tastes thin, with no weight to itgeneral guidance
A short shaken drink with nothing rich in it depends on sugar and dilution for body. Try a slightly richer syrup — two parts sugar to one of water rather than equal parts — which adds weight without adding much more sweetness. Egg white or aquafaba does the same job more dramatically, and turns it into a sour.
Served too warmgeneral guidance
Chill the glass, ice and every ingredient ahead of time — a warm pour is the fastest way to lose a cold drink's balance. For one serving, there's no real fix beyond rebuilding it properly chilled; for a batch, keep everything refrigerated until the moment of serving and add ice last.
Over-diluted (tastes watery)general guidance
Likely shaken too long, or with too much ice surface area. For one serving there's no fixing it after the fact — rebuild with fewer, larger ice cubes and a shorter shake. Planning a batch? Shorten the ice-contact time across the whole round, not just this glass.
Under-diluted (tastes harsh or too concentrated)general guidance
For one serving, stir in a few drops of chilled water to open it up. For a batch, extend the shake time slightly on the next round.
No cocktail shakergeneral guidance
A jar with a tight-fitting lid, shaken firmly.
No cocktail strainergeneral guidance
A slotted spoon held over the shaker while pouring.

Make ahead & storage

Batch the base, finish at serving

Batch the base days ahead and add fresh lemon juice when you pour.

Add about 27% water to the batch to replace what the ice would otherwise contribute, or it will pour noticeably harsher than a fresh one.

Fresh lemon juice:
Fresh citrus loses its aroma within hours and turns dull. Squeeze it on the day.

What it tastes like

The taste, and what drives it

sweet, sharp, light — a sour-structured drink served over ice.

Sweet

Dry → Sweet

Openly sweet, and balanced by something else rather than hidden.

What drives it: Midori (melon liqueur) — carries the most sugar into the glass.

Sharp

Soft → Sharp

Properly sharp. This is the axis the drink is built on.

What drives it: Fresh lemon juice — supplies the acidity.

Light

Light → Rich

Light-bodied. It refreshes rather than satisfies, which is usually the intention.

What drives it: Midori (melon liqueur) — adds most of the weight.

Moderate

Delicate → Bold

Moderate: assertive enough to hold its own, mild enough for a second.

What drives it: Midori (melon liqueur) — is the most concentrated thing in the glass.

What you smell first

  • Citrus peelLeads

    From Fresh lemon juice, Lemon wheel

  • Tropical fruitLeads

    From Midori (melon liqueur)

Every aroma here comes from the liquid itself; nothing is layered on top.

How it was worked out

Each reading comes from the recipe's own recorded taste scores combined with what each ingredient contributes, weighted by how much of it is in the glass. Almost everything in this drink has detailed ingredient data behind it.

How balance actually works →

If it isn't right

What goes wrong with this drink, and why

Only the faults this particular recipe is actually prone to — each with the likely cause, the adjustment, and what the adjustment costs you.

  • It's too sweet

    Likely cause
    Midori (melon liqueur) is carrying the sugar here, and it is the easiest thing in the drink to over-pour — syrup clings to a jigger and a "splash" is rarely the same twice.
    What to change
    Cut midori (melon liqueur) by about a third and rebuild. If it is already made, a squeeze of citrus is faster than starting again.
    What that does
    The drink will read sharper as well as less sweet, because the acid stops being balanced. That is usually the intention, but it is a bigger change than it sounds.

  • It's too sour

    Likely cause
    Fresh lemon juice varies more than any other ingredient in the drink. Limes differ by weeks of ripeness, and a sharp one can be half again as acidic as a mild one at the same measure.
    What to change
    Add sweetener a few millilitres at a time rather than diluting — you are correcting a ratio, not a concentration.
    What that does
    Sourness recedes and the drink gains a little weight. Overshoot and you will be reading the too-sweet entry above instead.

  • It tastes weak

    Likely cause
    Usually dilution rather than measurement: shaking adds water as it chills, and wet or small ice adds far more of it than cold, large ice does.
    What to change
    Use larger, colder ice and work faster. Adding more spirit fixes the symptom and unbalances everything else.
    What that does
    The drink gains definition without gaining sugar. It will also read as slightly sharper, which is what 'more presence' usually means in practice.

  • It's watery

    Likely cause
    Shaking adds water while it chills, and the two cannot be separated. Wet ice from a freezer door, or small cubes, will over-dilute before the drink is properly cold.
    What to change
    Use bigger, drier, colder ice and stop sooner. Chilling the glass first buys you time you would otherwise spend diluting.
    What that does
    More flavour concentration at the same temperature. Under-dilute instead and the drink will taste harsh — this is a target, not a direction.

  • It doesn't smell of anything

    Likely cause
    This drink's aroma comes from citrus peel and tropical fruit, carried in the liquid. Serving it too cold suppresses that: volatile compounds do not leave a very cold drink.
    What to change
    Let it sit for a minute before drinking, and use a glass that narrows towards the rim to concentrate what does escape.
    What that does
    More of the aroma escapes and the drink reads as more intense. The cost is temperature: a drink left to warm also dilutes faster, so this is a trade against how long it stays right.

  • It tastes one-dimensional

    Likely cause
    With 2 components there is nowhere for complexity to hide — a sour-structured drink is exposed by design, so a dull one is usually a dull ingredient rather than a missing step.
    What to change
    Change the quality of what is there before adding anything new: fresh citrus rather than bottled, a better base bottle, a dash of bitters. Bitters add layers at a scale nothing else matches.
    What that does
    More going on at the same strength and sweetness. Adding a whole extra ingredient instead usually produces a muddier drink rather than a deeper one.

Taste profile

Sweetness
3/5
Sourness
3/5
Bitterness
0/5
Strength
1/5
Fruitiness
4/5
Freshness
3/5
Creaminess
0/5
Smokiness
0/5

Nutrition & alcohol

Estimate onlyMidori's sugar content is fairly consistent, but the optional syrup shifts the total.
Calories
125 kcal
Sugar
16 g
Carbohydrates
17 g
Alcohol units (UK)
0.9
US standard drinks
0.51
ABV
6%
Serving size
150 ml
Show calculation assumptions

Source: Calculated from standard measures

Calorie breakdown: ~50 kcal from alcohol, ~75 kcal from sugar and mixers.

Likely range: 94–156 kcal, reflecting the confidence level above — not a lab-measured figure.

Assumes Midori at 20% ABV, 25ml lemon juice and 10ml simple syrup.

These figures are estimates, not laboratory measurements — individual tolerance to alcohol varies. See our responsible drinking guidance.

Variations

  • Midori Illusion

    Add pineapple juice and a splash of vodka for a fruitier, boozier variation.

  • Melon Ball

    Replace some of the lemon juice with orange juice and add a splash of vodka.

What kind of drink this is

The structure behind the recipe

A shaken build: a sour-structured liqueur-led-based drink, served over ice — light and lively in the mouth.

Sour-structured

Something sour and something sweet held in balance over a base — the structure behind the whole sour family and everything descended from it.

  • Base

    Midori (melon liqueur)

  • Sour element

    Fresh lemon juice

  • Sweet element

    Simple syrup (optional)

Drinks built this way are collected as the Sour family.

Technique

shaken

Ice is thrown against the liquid and against itself, chipping fragments off and driving air through the mix. Chilling, dilution and aeration all happen at once and cannot be separated.

A lighter, briefly frothy body and a cloudy appearance that settles as it stands. The aeration blunts alcoholic heat, which is why a shaken drink tastes softer than a stirred one of the same strength.

What it ruins: Clarity, and any carbonation. A shaken spirits-only drink arrives cloudy with ice shards floating in it, and shaking anything fizzy is the one rule with no exceptions.

Everything about shaking →How the technique works →

Dilution

During mixing, then strained

Water from ice typically makes up around 30% of the finished drink for a shaken build (commonly 25–35%). Dilution is an ingredient here, not a side effect.

Why dilution is an ingredient →

Served

Over ice

Rocks glass · 150ml

Served on ice, so it keeps chilling in the glass. A larger, colder, slower drink than the same spirits served straight up.

Texture and aroma

Light and lively

Shaking whips air through the drink, giving a lighter, briefly frothy body that settles as it stands.

No dedicated aromatic component — what you smell is the spirit itself, which is a deliberate choice in a drink this spare.

Where to go from here

Each of these is here because of something specific about this drink, not as a standard set of links.

Where it comes from

Origin and family

Origin of the Midori Sour

Japanese in origin — Midori liqueur was launched by Suntory in 1978 — with the sour becoming a fixture of American bar culture through the 1980s.

Family

Sour

2 parts spirit · 1 part citrus · 1 part sweetener — shaken, strained, served up or over ice.

1980 onwardOther modern classics drinks →

On drinks history

Cocktail origin stories are frequently repeated and rarely evidenced. Our history section separates what is documented from what is folklore rather than picking whichever version reads best.

History and culture →

Try this next

Related tools

Scale this for a party

Work out bottles, mixers, ice and total alcohol units for any number of guests.

Recipe confidence

A well-documented, simple 1980s bar classic with a stable basic recipe.

High confidence