Delightfully sweet yet enticingly tangy, the Lemon Drop is the perfect balance of vodka, citrus and sugar to put that ‘zing’ in your cocktail hour.
Said to be invented by saloon owner Norman Jay Hobday, the Lemon Drop is believed to have originated in San Francisco in the ’70s. Named after the 19th-century candied lolly, the drink quickly became a runaway hit with trendy urbanites, and would go on to be featured in the pages of hip cocktail menus worldwide. Created during a revolutionary era where women began stepping out for a night on the town solo, it's rumoured that the strikingly chic Lemon Drop was initially created to entice single women to drink at Norman’s bar, Henry Africa (spoiler alert: the single men quickly followed).
Often mislabelled as a Martini, the Lemon Drop is more closely related to the Crusta or Daisy cocktail family. Both share a base of quality spirits with a balanced sweet, sour and citrus twist. The Crusta also shares the Lemon Drop’s crystalline sugar rim, a step we implore you not to skip when creating yours at home. Trust us, that sweet moment when the crunchy sugar brushes your lips before melding with the zingy hit of lemon and vodka is the icing on the (lemon) cake.
TV queen Oprah herself professed her love for the sweet ‘n’ sour sipper on her show in 2006, further cementing the cocktail’s icon status. The kaleidoscope of initial sweetness followed by a zippy tang is the perfect sweet-to-sour symphony that simply can’t be passed up. *drool*
