The Raspberry Paloma: The Spring Special That Earned Its Place on the Menu

Not every cocktail that makes it onto the permanent menu was designed to be there.

Some are built with that intention from the beginning: a concept developed over weeks, a technique refined across many iterations, a name chosen before the recipe is finalised. The Old Beanut was like that. So was the Tzatziki Martini. Both arrived with a deliberateness to them, a sense that they had been thought about until they were ready.

The Raspberry Paloma arrived differently. It went onto the spring specials menu as one of three seasonal cocktails, ran for a month, and proceeded to outsell everything else on the menu by a margin that made the decision about whether to keep it permanently very straightforward.

Some cocktails earn their place. This one did it convincingly.

The paloma and why Greece loves it

Before explaining what makes the Raspberry Paloma specifically interesting, it is worth understanding the format it belongs to, because the paloma has a cultural context that most people in the UK are not fully aware of.

The paloma is Mexico's most popular cocktail. That is not a casual claim. In Mexico, the paloma outsells the margarita by a significant margin, which surprises most people outside the country because the margarita has a considerably higher international profile. The paloma's combination of tequila, grapefruit, and a salted rim is simpler than the margarita, more refreshing in a hot climate, and more forgiving to make consistently well. Mexico adopted it as its everyday tequila drink while the margarita became the export that the rest of the world recognises.

What is less well known is what happened when the paloma format reached Greece.

Greek bars, particularly in Athens and Thessaloniki, have embraced the paloma with the same enthusiasm that they apply to anything cooling, citrus-forward, and easily drinkable in warm weather. Walk into any bar in Greece during summer that takes its drinks seriously and there is a very good chance you will find a paloma or a paloma variation on the menu, often made with local spirits or local citrus in place of the standard Mexican ingredients. The Greek bar scene's approach to the paloma tends toward the same philosophy it applies to cucumber cocktails: refreshment as the primary objective, with local character adding something distinctive to a globally recognised format.

This is the context the Raspberry Paloma comes from. It is a Greek-influenced take on a Mexican original, made with a homemade infusion and a specific soda that changes the character of the drink in ways worth understanding.

The homemade raspberry infusion

The Raspberry Paloma uses El Jimador Blanco tequila as its base, infused in-house with fresh raspberries for twenty-four hours.

The infusion process follows the same principle as the Warmth Within, where Patron Reposado sits with ginger and chilli long enough for the flavour compounds to fully bond with the alcohol molecules rather than simply existing alongside them. A twenty-four hour infusion gives the raspberries enough time to transfer their essential character into the tequila: the fruit's natural acidity, its deep berry sweetness, and the slight earthy quality that fresh raspberries carry beneath the obvious fruit notes.

The result is a tequila that is visibly changed. The spirit takes on a deep pink colour from the raspberry pigments, which is what gives the finished cocktail its striking appearance in the glass. But the colour is a byproduct rather than the purpose. The purpose is flavour: a raspberry character that is fully integrated into the base rather than layered on top of it through syrup or cordial.

The difference between a raspberry-infused tequila and a tequila with raspberry syrup added is the same difference that appears across every infusion at Nectar: the infused version tastes as though the fruit grew inside the spirit. The syrup version tastes like two separate things sharing a glass. The infusion takes twenty-four hours but produces a result that no amount of post-mixing can replicate.

El Jimador Blanco is the specific tequila used, and the choice suits the paloma format well. It is a clean, bright blanco with an agave-forward character and a natural citrus quality that sits naturally alongside grapefruit. The raspberry infusion adds depth and colour without fighting the tequila's own character, which is the mark of a good infusion: the spirit is enhanced rather than obscured.

Three Cents Pink Grapefruit Soda

Most palomas are made with a standard grapefruit soda, fresh grapefruit juice, or a combination of both. The Raspberry Paloma uses Three Cents Pink Grapefruit Soda, and the choice is not incidental.

Three Cents is a craft soda brand founded in Athens in 2014, which gives it a direct connection to the Greek bar scene that has been part of the Raspberry Paloma's cultural context from the beginning. The brand was created specifically for cocktail use rather than for drinking straight, which means the carbonation level, the sugar balance, and the flavour intensity are all calibrated to work within a mixed drink rather than to stand alone. This is a different design brief to a standard commercial soda and it produces a different result in the glass.

The pink grapefruit specifically brings a bittersweet citrus quality that is slightly more delicate than standard yellow grapefruit, with a natural fruitiness that sits naturally alongside the raspberry infusion. The two fruit flavours, raspberry and pink grapefruit, occupy adjacent registers without competing: the raspberry is darker and deeper, the grapefruit is brighter and more acidic, and together they create a complexity in the finished drink that a standard paloma does not have.

Three Cents is used by some of the best cocktail bars in the world specifically because it does what it is designed to do: extend a spirit without diluting it, add carbonation without dominating the flavour, and bring a quality of production that shows up in every sip.

The lime, agave, and salted rim

The remaining components of the Raspberry Paloma are the structural elements that keep the drink in balance and within the paloma format.

Fresh lime provides the acidity that the drink needs to feel alive rather than simply sweet. The raspberry infusion and the Three Cents soda both carry natural sweetness and the lime cuts through both, keeping the whole drink feeling fresh rather than rich. It is the same function that lime performs in the original paloma and in the margarita: not a flavour statement but a structural element that holds everything else in the right relationship.

Agave syrup provides the additional sweetness that balances the lime and the bitter edge of the grapefruit soda. The choice of agave rather than simple syrup is deliberate: agave has a flavour of its own, a slight earthiness and warmth that is distinctly of the plant, and it connects the sweetener to the tequila base in a way that a neutral sugar syrup does not. Both the spirit and the syrup come from the agave plant. The coherence is both technical and philosophical.

The salted rim is the detail that most people who try the Raspberry Paloma mention specifically. Salt does something to a cocktail that is difficult to explain until you have experienced it: it does not make the drink taste salty, it makes everything else taste more like itself. The sweetness of the raspberry becomes more vivid. The acidity of the lime becomes cleaner. The bitterness of the grapefruit becomes more precise. The salt is doing the same work that it does in food, amplifying the flavours that are already present and creating a contrast that makes every sip more engaging than it would be without it.

The combination of the salted rim and the pink grapefruit soda also means that every sip of the Raspberry Paloma changes slightly depending on how much salt is on the glass at that point. Early sips carry more salt. Later sips carry less. The drink evolves as you drink it, which is one of the quiet pleasures of a well-designed cocktail that most people notice without consciously registering.

What happened during the spring specials

The spring specials menu ran alongside two other cocktails: the Spring Spritz, a light and floral Gin Mare build with elderflower and prosecco, and the Tropicoco, a sweet and indulgent El Jimador Reposado cocktail with passionfruit, mango, and coconut foam. Both were good cocktails. Both generated positive responses from the tables that ordered them.

The Raspberry Paloma outsold both of them by a margin that surprised even us.

This kind of response from a specials menu is the most reliable signal available for what should happen next. A specials menu exists precisely to test whether a cocktail earns a permanent place, and the test is simple: does it get ordered? Not just once, by people who are curious, but repeatedly, by people who have tried it and want it again, and by people at adjacent tables who see it arrive and ask what it is.

The Raspberry Paloma passed that test consistently throughout the spring. The visual effect of the deep pink cocktail in a glass with a salted rim meant that almost every table that saw it ordered it. The flavour meant that the tables that ordered it once ordered it again. By the end of the specials period, the decision to move it to the permanent menu was not a creative choice. It was simply an acknowledgment of what had already happened.

Sharp, easy, cooling

The Raspberry Paloma is described on the menu as sharp, easy, and cooling, which are the three qualities it delivers in sequence.

Sharp arrives first: the raspberry infusion, the lime, and the grapefruit soda all carry acidity, and the drink opens with a brightness that is immediately engaging. Easy follows: the agave sweetness and the natural fruit character of the raspberry make the drink approachable and generous in a way that the acidity alone would not. And cooling is the quality that lasts: a long, cold, carbonated drink that does what a good summer cocktail should do and does it for the length of the glass.

It is the most accessible cocktail on the new menu. It does not ask anything of the person drinking it. It does not require knowledge of a technique or curiosity about an unusual ingredient. It is simply a very good version of a drink that has been appreciated in warm climates for decades, made with a homemade infusion, a craft soda from Athens, and a salted rim that makes everything taste more like itself.

The Laterna is the cocktail for the beginning of the evening, when the light is still in the sky and the conversation has not found its direction yet. The Raspberry Paloma is the cocktail for the moment when the evening has decided what it is and everyone at the table is in it fully. Both are light and refreshing. They occupy different moments in the same night.

Drink it alongside the cheese filo pastry if you want the most natural pairing on the current menu. The honey on the pastry echoes the raspberry and the agave in the cocktail, and the salt of the feta mirrors the salted rim in a way that feels deliberate even though it arrived by coincidence.

Book a table at Nectar Bar and order the Raspberry Paloma. It earned its place. You will understand why quickly.

Opening hours Tuesday to Thursday: 5pm to 11pm Friday: 5pm to 1am Saturday: 12pm to 1am Sunday: 12pm to 11pm Monday: Closed