Each month, more Aussie look up the recipe for a pornstar martini than a Daiquiri or Old Fashioned. It’s also big in Sydney and Melbourne bars. Here’s why the noughties-era drink is back.
Few people will admit to drinking them, but the numbers don’t lie: the pornstar martini is being mixed at home and ordered at bars far more often than you’d think.
The noughties-era cocktail has appeared in Google’s Year in Search list for its third consecutive year, landing at No.5 for 2025.
Each month, more Australians look up the recipe for a pornstar martini than for a martini, Old Fashioned, Daiquiri or Manhattan.
For those who insist they haven’t tried one, the drink blends passionfruit puree, Passoa passionfruit liqueur and vanilla vodka, served with a sidecar shot of sparkling wine.
At PS40 in Sydney’s CBD, owner Michael Chiem serves his own version, the INXS, which consistently ranks among the bar’s top three cocktails. “It’s pretty high up there,” he says.
The combination of passionfruit and vanilla – the classic baking flavours beloved in a vanilla slice – makes it one of those “we’re definitely going to sell a lot of these” drinks, he says.
Chiem’s take uses vanilla bean-infused vodka, with passionfruit, pineapple, Earl Grey tea and black cardamom, clarified into a milk punch. Instead of the sparkling wine shot, the prosecco becomes a jelly set inside hollowed-out passionfruit shells.
He says the drink is approachable, and tends to appeal to people who prefer fruit-forward flavours and sweeter-style drinks.
‘It’s a really good introduction to cocktails if someone’s not a big cocktail drinker.’
Matt Whiley, mixologist
“It’s just really fun,” says Jeremy Blackmore, creative director of Mucho Group, which is running a pornstar martini special at Bar Herbs in the Sydney CBD and a pornstar margarita at Tio’s in Surry Hills. “I think a lot of people just want something that tastes great that they don’t have to think about too much.”
Mixologist and bar consultant Matt Whiley, who is behind the drinks list at Curious in Melbourne, recently created a spritz-style version of the pornstar martini for Olympus in Redfern, and sees it as an entry point for newer cocktail drinkers.
“It’s a flavour profile that people know and like and understand,” he says. “It’s a really good introduction to cocktails if someone’s not a big cocktail drinker.”
While Whiley doesn’t drink pornstar martinis himself, he has an appreciation for both the drink and its creator.
The late London mixologist Douglas Ankrah invented the pornstar martini in 2003 at his Knightsbridge bar, Townhouse.
Ankrah, who founded the influential London Academy of Bartenders (LAB Bar) in 1996, initially named it the maverick martini after a favourite gentlemen’s club in Cape Town. He later changed it to the pornstar martini, saying “it looked like what a porn star would drink”. Ankrah died in 2021 at age 51.
“Since his passing, I think bartenders have embraced it a lot more,” Whiley says. “He was a bartender of our generation and everyone’s sort of been respectful to the work that he did. I really love to see it high on cocktail lists.”
That same year, the pornstar martini became the most Googled cocktail globally, with more than 18 million searches worldwide.
Although it predates social media, it’s recognised as a prototype of the Instagram-era drink. “They are colourful and vibrant and good to take photos of,” Whiley says.
The interactive element adds to its appeal. “You get to choose whether you want to take the prosecco as a shot, sip it or put it in your drink, and that sort of thing is common now but in the 2000s, it wasn’t.”
People love that element of participation, he says. “Whether it’s a chef coming out to the table with a tiramisu, filleting a fish or making a beef tartare. The guest gets to be involved and do something.”
And then, of course, there’s the cocktail’s racy name. “It’s all part of the charm of the drink.”
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Erina Starkey – Erina is the Good Food App Editor for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Previously, Erina held a number of editing roles at delicious.com.au and writing roles at Broadsheet and Concrete Playground.
