Grinch Drinks: Green Cocktails, a Red-and-Green Shot and a No-Alcohol Fizz for Kids
The first year we threw a Grinch party, the only green bottle in the house was a half-finished Midori. It carried the whole night. Melon liqueur pours that exact sour, slightly unnatural green of the character’s fur, and almost every adult drink on this menu leans on it somewhere.
Since then the menu has grown into a whole table, green on one side and cranberry red on the other, with a no-alcohol glass for the kids that matches the grown-ups’ color. It’s a fan party with homemade cards, nothing official. Each drink below is a real recipe from our database, and the measurements are the ones we pour at home. When a guest brings an unexpected bottle, we look it up in Cocktail Builder and see which green or red drink it can join.
The Grinch himself
His namesake goes on the card at the top. The Grinch is Midori, Malibu coconut rum and banana liqueur, topped up with 7-Up. We build it tall over ice with an ounce of Midori, half an ounce each of Malibu and banana liqueur, and about four ounces of soda. Melon and coconut up front, banana somewhere behind them: a beach-holiday flavor for a character who hates everyone, which only makes it funnier.
Grinch’s Christmas is the sharper, more grown-up glass. Skyy vodka, Cointreau, Midori and sweet and sour mix go into a shaker, roughly an ounce of vodka, an ounce of Midori, half an ounce of Cointreau and two of sour mix. Strained into a coupe, it comes out pale and cloudy green, closer to a melon margarita than a highball.
Friends kept asking for a Grinch cocktail with prosecco. Fair enough. We strain the Grinch’s Christmas into a flute, leave it a little short and lay an inch of cold prosecco over the top. That last step is our own addition rather than part of the recipe, and the bubbles soften the sour mix nicely.
Mount Crumpit green
The rest of the green end of the table runs from tropical to tart. A Mistletoe Martini shakes coconut rum, melon liqueur, pineapple juice and sweet and sour mix and goes up in a chilled glass. Sweet, tart, faintly tropical, and very green. Add grenadine to almost the same four ingredients and you get the Dirty Christmas Tree. We pour the grenadine last, down the inside of the glass, so it pools red at the bottom like a tree skirt under green branches.
For a lighter glass, the Green Snowball is limeade, Stoli Citros vodka and Fresca over plenty of ice. An ounce and a half of vodka to three of limeade, topped with Fresca, keeps it bright. It’s the one we drink ourselves while hosting, since it stays light over a long evening. Between this, the Grinch’s Christmas and the Red Rudolph further down, anyone hunting for Grinch drinks with vodka has three to choose from. The pale one in the corner is Christmas Tree Water, gin and Sprite. It isn’t green at all. Gin smells of juniper, though, and juniper is a conifer, so the name makes sense the moment you lift the glass.
Red, for the heart that grew
By the end of the story his heart has grown three sizes, and that’s our cue for a red end of the table. The Red Rudolph mixes vodka, cranberry juice, orange curaçao and cinnamon schnapps. Go easy on the schnapps, half an ounce at most, or the cinnamon takes over. Christmas Cheer #2 is apple vodka, triple sec, grenadine and cranberry, and the apple and cranberry together remind us of cold cider at a winter market.
Then there’s the one drink that does both colors on purpose. Christmas in a Glass takes lemonade, Midori and a little Galliano, with grenadine sinking to the bottom. Left unstirred it shows red under green, with the vanilla and anise of the Galliano somewhere in the middle. Once stirred, the color goes a muddy brown, so we hand it over unstirred.
A shot in both colors
Our late-evening shot is the Santa Shot, layered red, green and clear. Grenadine goes in first because sugar syrup with no alcohol is the heaviest thing in the glass. Green crème de menthe follows, poured slowly over the back of a spoon, and peppermint schnapps sits on top. Cherry sweetness first, then a cold blast of mint.
For something creamier, The Drunken Elf shakes green crème de menthe and cream with cinnamon schnapps and drops a couple of cinnamon candies in the glass. If the shot table grows, our Christmas shots roundup has eight more, including the Christmas Cookie with Kahlúa and Irish cream.
No alcohol, still green
Children at a Grinch party want what the adults have, and they mostly want it green. Our kid-friendly fizz is the Green Snowball with the vodka left out: about three ounces of limeade topped with Fresca or any lemon-lime soda, over crushed ice. We drop a single maraschino cherry into the bottom of each glass for the small red heart. Drivers and anyone skipping alcohol get the same glass, cherry and all.
For a bowl, Christmas Cranberry Punch has no alcohol in it at all. Cranberry juice, orange juice and lemon-lime soda go in together with a handful of whole cranberries floating on top. It is red rather than green, so it goes at the cranberry end of the table, and adults can splash vodka into their own cup. Our holiday party punch recipes cover the boozier bowls if you want one of each.
Naming the cards
Every glass gets a little folded card. We keep the real drink name in small type underneath and give it a party name on top: Mount Crumpit for the Mistletoe Martini, Three Sizes for the Red Rudolph, Max’s Antler for the Santa Shot, and Cindy Lou for the no-alcohol fizz. Guests start ordering by the party names within the hour. We did the same thing on our Shrek themed drinks menu, where green also does most of the work.
Around eleven, someone always asks whether the Grinch would have liked any of this. Probably not. He’d have stood at the window with the Santa Shot, scowling, and complained about the noise.
Last modified on October 25, 2026
