The Tzatziki Martini. Creamy. Greek. Adventurous.

There is one cocktail on our menu that almost every guest asks about. Before anyone even orders it, the question usually comes up.

"Why isn't it creamy?"

The Tzatziki Martini sounds like it should be thick, rich and yoghurt-heavy. After all, tzatziki itself is made from yogurt, cucumber, garlic and dill. But when the drink arrives at the table, it looks completely clear. Crystal clear. The kind of clear that makes people pick it up, hold it to the light and look at it slightly suspiciously before they take a sip.

That surprise is exactly where the story of this cocktail begins.

Why Tzatziki

Before we get into the technique, it is worth explaining why tzatziki in the first place.

Nectar is a Mediterranean gastro bar. Everything we do, from the food to the cocktails to the wine list, is filtered through a Mediterranean lens. When Panos started developing the cocktail menu before we opened, the question was not just what would taste good. It was what would feel genuinely connected to the identity of the place.

Tzatziki is one of the most universally recognised symbols of Greek food culture. It appears on almost every Greek table in some form. It is cooling, herbal, garlicky, and unmistakably Greek. The idea of building a cocktail around those flavours was, on the surface, completely absurd. Which is precisely what made it interesting.

The challenge was not whether the flavour combination could work. It was whether the result could feel elegant rather than gimmicky. A savoury cocktail that tastes of yogurt and garlic is easy to imagine as a novelty act. What Panos set out to build was something that could stand alongside the rest of the menu as a serious, well-crafted drink that happened to be inspired by one of Greece's most beloved condiments.

What Clarification Actually Is

To understand the Tzatziki Martini properly, you need to understand what clarification does and why it matters.

Clarification is a technique that has been used in kitchens for centuries, most famously in the making of consommé, the crystal-clear French broth that is produced by removing all particles and impurities from a cloudy stock. In cocktail making, the same principle applies. You start with a liquid that contains flavour compounds bound to proteins, fats and solids. You then use a process that strips away those solids while leaving the flavour behind in the liquid.

The most common method used in cocktail bars today is milk washing or, in this case, yogurt clarification. When an acidic liquid is introduced to a protein-rich substance like yogurt or milk, the proteins coagulate and clump together. Those clumps then act as a filter, trapping particles, colour molecules and certain harsh compounds as they fall through the liquid. What remains after filtering is a liquid that is clear, silky in texture, and stripped of anything that was creating cloudiness or visual noise.

The extraordinary thing about this process is what it does to flavour. The harsh edges of certain ingredients are often carried in the same compounds that create colour and cloudiness. Remove those compounds and you frequently find that the flavour becomes smoother, rounder and more refined. The result is a drink that is easier to drink than its raw ingredients would suggest, while still carrying the full character of everything that went into it.

For the Tzatziki Martini, this means a cocktail that tastes clearly and unmistakably of cucumber, dill, garlic and the creamy savoury character of yogurt, while looking for all the world like a simple, elegant martini. The gap between what the drink looks like and what it tastes like is the entire point.

How We Make It

The process starts with the infusion.

We take our base spirit and combine it with the core components of tzatziki: cucumber, yogurt, dill and garlic. The mixture rests for around 48 hours. This extended resting time is important. A short infusion would pull surface flavour from the ingredients without fully integrating them into the spirit. 48 hours allows the flavour compounds to migrate properly, creating a liquid where the ingredients and the spirit have genuinely become one thing rather than a spirit with things floating in it.

At this stage the liquid looks exactly as you would expect. Cloudy, thick, green-tinged and very far from the clean martini that eventually reaches the table. It smells strongly of all its components. Anyone watching this stage of the process would be entirely unconvinced that something elegant was coming.

Then the clarification begins.

The infused liquid goes through the clarification process, which removes the yogurt solids and colour while leaving the flavour and a subtle creamy texture behind. The filtration is slow and requires patience. Rushing it produces a cloudy result. Done properly, the liquid that emerges is completely clear, with a texture that is slightly smoother than water but has none of the thickness you might expect.

What remains in the glass is a drink that carries fresh cucumber on the nose, herbal dill in the middle, and a gentle savoury warmth from the garlic that sits quietly at the back of every sip. The yogurt does not present as a flavour in the way you might expect. Instead it contributes a roundness, a softness to the texture that makes the drink feel more complete than it would without it.

Weeks of Trial and Error

Getting to the final recipe was not straightforward. The drink went through weeks of testing and adjustments before we were happy with it.

Small changes in ratios, infusion times and clarification methods completely altered the result. Some early versions were too savoury, tipping from interesting into challenging. Others lost the herbal character of the dill almost entirely during clarification. Some had the right flavour but the wrong texture. Others had the clarity without the depth.

The garlic presented a particular challenge. Garlic is an ingredient that can easily dominate. Too much and the drink becomes unwearable for an entire evening. Too little and the savoury depth that gives the cocktail its character disappears. Finding the ratio that felt present without being aggressive required more iterations than almost any other element of the recipe.

Eventually the drink started to come together. What had begun as an experiment that most people would have abandoned after the first tasting slowly became something that could hold its own on a serious cocktail menu.

Why We Changed the Spirit

The original version of the Tzatziki Martini was built using Absolut Vodka. It worked. The clarification process functioned well, the flavours came through cleanly, and the result was a genuinely interesting cocktail.

But something always felt slightly disconnected. Vodka is intentionally neutral. That neutrality is part of its value in many cocktails. In this case, it meant the drink was carrying all the character of its ingredients without anything in the base spirit contributing to the sense of place that the rest of our menu was trying to create.

The switch to Gin Mare changed everything.

Gin Mare is a Mediterranean gin produced in Spain, built around a botanical profile that includes olives, basil, thyme and rosemary. It is one of the few gins that smells and tastes explicitly of the Mediterranean coastline rather than a more classic juniper-forward British style. When we introduced it as the base spirit for the Tzatziki Martini, the botanicals in the gin locked into the herbal character of the dill and the savoury depth of the garlic in a way that vodka never had. The drink suddenly felt like it belonged in the same conversation as the rest of the menu. The Mediterranean identity of Nectar, which was present in the food and the wine and the atmosphere, was now present in the cocktail too.

That change transformed the Tzatziki Martini from a very good cocktail into one that feels genuinely specific to this place.

What to Eat With It

The Tzatziki Martini is one of the few cocktails on our menu that we would actively encourage you to drink alongside food rather than before or after it.

The herbal and savoury character of the drink makes it an unexpectedly good match for certain dishes. The Chicken Skewers are the most natural pairing. Souvlaki and tzatziki are inseparable in Greek food culture, and the cocktail carries enough of the tzatziki character to create a genuine echo between the glass and the plate.

What the Tzatziki Martini does not pair well with is sweet food. The savoury profile of the drink and anything sweet-led tend to work against each other. Treat it as you would a dry, herbaceous white wine and the food pairing decisions become instinctive.

The Competition Connection

The Tzatziki Martini was not created for competition. It was created because we wanted a cocktail that could not exist anywhere else.

When Panos was building the menu before we opened, the ambition was never simply to have a good drinks list. It was to have drinks that were specific enough to Nectar, and to the Mediterranean identity behind it, that they could not be lifted and placed in another bar without losing something essential. The Tzatziki Martini is the purest expression of that ambition.

It is a cocktail that is rooted in a specific cuisine, built using a technique that requires genuine skill, and produces a result that surprises almost everyone who encounters it for the first time. That combination is rare. Most cocktails are good. Very few are genuinely distinctive in a way that makes them memorable beyond the evening they were drunk.

We built the Tzatziki Martini to be one of those drinks. Something that people talk about when they leave, recommend to friends before they visit, and think about ordering again the next time they come in. A cocktail that puts Nectar on the map not just as a good bar in Edinburgh, but as a bar doing something worth travelling for.

That is still the goal. We think we got there with this one.

If you want to understand more about how Panos approaches the process of building a cocktail from concept to finished glass, we wrote about that here.

Our Most Talked-About Cocktail

The Tzatziki Martini has quickly become the drink guests talk about the most, both at the table and afterwards.

Some people order it immediately, drawn in by the name and curious about what it could possibly be. Others spend ten minutes staring at the menu, caught between curiosity and caution, trying to decide whether savoury garlic in a cocktail is something they actually want. A few ask for a description, hear it explained, and still take another few minutes to commit.

We will never push anyone towards it. The best version of this cocktail is the one ordered by someone who genuinely wants to try it, not the one accepted reluctantly after a well-meaning recommendation from the bar.

But if you find yourself looking at the menu and feeling that particular pull of curiosity towards something you cannot quite picture, the Tzatziki Martini is usually the answer to that feeling.

The most unexpected cocktail is often the one you remember the most. This one has a habit of proving that true.

You can see the full cocktail menu and everything else we offer here. When you are ready to try it for yourself, book your table here.

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