The Appletini is a 1990s cocktail known for its candy apple pucker and neon green color. This modified recipe combines vodka, calvados, apple juice, lemon juice, and a touch of simple syrup.
The now-shuttered Lola’s restaurant in West Hollywood claims to have invented the drink that swept the late ’90s and early 2000s. The Los Angeles restaurant was one of the first in the city to have a “Martini” menu. As the story goes, in 1996, over the Fourth of July weekend, the restaurant owner, Loren “Lola” Dunsworth, was approached by a Ketel One Vodka rep to create a special Martini using the brand.
“We had a bottle of [DeKuyper’s Sour] Apple Pucker and a bottle of Ketel One, and we combined the two and I thought, ‘It tastes just like a Jolly Rancher’,” Dunsworth told The Los Angeles Times in 2012. “We sell ludicrous amounts of Apple Martinis. I don’t know of any craft cocktails that people seek out the world over like they do the Apple Martini. I think it makes people happy.”
The drink’s original name was Adam’s Apple Martini after Adam Karsten, the bartender who crafted the version that ended up on Lola’s menu. Once the cocktail took off, Apple Martini was shortened to Appletini, and the moniker stuck.
By the mid-2000s, after the modern craft cocktail boom took root, a new generation of bartenders started to play with the Appletini concept, creating versions where real apple flavors were able to shine. Apple brandies, fresh juice, and ciders took the place of apple pucker liqueurs, sweet-and-sour mix, and radioactive colors.
Why does the Appletini work?
Though Lola’s Adam’s Apple Martini may have only contained vodka and apple-flavored schnapps, the variations that came after likely included other ingredients to give it some dimension. A touch of sour mix was often added to balance the sweetness of the liqueur, transforming the drink into a proper sour variation.
The key to staying true to the original Appletini is to keep it fun, boozy, and snappy. This version leans into the apple flavors with equal parts vodka, calvados, and apple juice. Granny Smith apple juice will be a crisp, tart alternative.
Calvados, a French brandy similar to Cognac, is made primarily with apples from the Northern French region of Normandy. The younger the spirit, the fresher the apple flavors that will emerge. Older calvados will express more caramel apple and baked pie flavors.
Freshly squeezed lemon juice and simple syrup keep this variation zippy and bright, helping to spotlight the drink’s fresh green apple flavors.