To many people, the expert combination of vanilla vodka, passion fruit puree, Passoã and champagne serves as a syrupy promise of a good night ahead. To me, however, even a whiff of a pornstar martini takes me right back to my waitressing days in the Midlands, and to sticky hands and broken glass after I dropped a tray of four of the damned things. I don’t need a drinks marketing report to tell me it was the most popular cocktail in 2018; I lived it.
The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more.
The pornstar martini feels like a seedy, hedonistic concoction dreamed up in the 1980s by way of Miami’s South Beach, but it was in fact devised in London, by legendary Ghanaian mixologist Douglas Ankrah, who honed his skills at the Hard Rock Cafe before setting up the fabled London Academy of Bartending, or Lab bar, in 1996 (this later led to the launch of Lab Bar on Old Compton Street and later Townhouse in Knightsbridge).
Ankrah invented the pornstar martini in 2003, although it was originally called the maverick martini, after a favourite gentleman’s club in Cape Town. His explanation for how he came up with the idea drips with the understatement of a true icon: “I created [it] in 15 minutes or less,”, he once recalled. “Like how Mick and Keith wrote (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction in 10 minutes.” Brilliant!
There are myriad rumours as to how the drink got its original name, but Ankrah once divulged in an interview with The Buyer that it was simply his interpretation of what he thought a porn star might like to drink. Give “pornstar martini” a search in your preferred search engine, however, and you’re unlikely to be presented with any of the supermarket offerings; in fact, I can’t be held responsible for what you will come across. These days, however, the drink goes by the rather coyer name “passion fruit martini”.
I grumbled a month or so ago about this change of name (if you’re old enough to drink, you’re probably old enough to know what a porn star is, after all) and asked what the reason might be. Turns out, I should have popped my query in the search bar of this very website: in 2019, Marks & Spencer had to rename its bestselling pre-batch cocktail following the upholding of a complaint by the Portman Group, the UK’s alcohol watchdog. The complaint claimed an association between alcohol and sexual activity or sexual success, a breach of section 3.2d of its code of practice. Fair enough: the association of intoxication with sexual success is a sticky one, let alone a realistic one (am I right, ladies?), but it feels a bit of a shame to erase the well-meaning work of Ankrah, as well as the oldest industry in the world.
Four premix passion fruit martinis that are worth a go
All Shook Up Passion Fruit Martini £1.50 (250ml) Tesco, 3.4%. The sales pitch says this is perfect for “the ’gram”, but it needs some extra vodka to make it stronger.
Funkin Nitro Cocktails Passion Fruit Martini £2.25 (200ml) Sainsbury’s, 5%. Nitro bubbles give this a velvety effervescence, while Funkin’s fruit purees are an industry staple for a reason.
Moth Passionfruit Martini £4 (125ml) Waitrose, 14.9%. Anything Moth does is tasty, and this has a far more appropriate ABV than two above.
Black Lines Passion Fruit Martini £22 (500ml) Black Lines, 14%. Always reliable, you need only shake this pre-batch with ice and strain into a glass.