Perroquet Drink: Pastis, Mint Syrup and Water, Plus the Tomate and Mauresque

A perroquet, French for parrot, is a glass of pastis lengthened with cold water and sweetened with green mint syrup, and the name comes from the color: once the water goes in, the anise spirit turns cloudy and the syrup tints that cloud a pale, opaque green. It is a café drink of southern France, ordered on a terrace in the afternoon, and it belongs to a small family of pastis serves that differ only in the syrup, which is why a French bartender who hears “un perroquet” needs no further instruction.

The build

The usual proportions are one part pastis to about five parts water, with a splash of syrup on top of that. Pastis is bottled at 40 to 45 percent alcohol, so a standard café measure of 2 cl diluted with 10 cl of water lands at roughly 7 percent, about the strength of a strong beer, while the syrup adds sweetness without changing that figure much.

The order matters more than the exact amounts, for reasons explained further down.

1. Pour the pastis into a tall glass.
2. Add the mint syrup and swirl once.
3. Pour in the water, which should be as cold as possible, and watch the drink cloud over.
4. Only then add ice, if any.

The Perroquet in the CocktailBuilder database follows the same idea with Pernod, mint syrup and water, although its method puts the ice in first; the café rule of water before ice gives a cleaner result. Pernod is an anise spirit rather than a pastis in the strict sense, because it is made without licorice root, but it clouds in the same way and the substitution is common outside France. In cafés the pastis is often served neat with a carafe of iced water on the side, so that the customer sets the dilution, and the syrup arrives already in the glass.

Why it turns cloudy

The haze is called the louche. Nothing reacts; it is a matter of solubility. Pastis takes its flavor mainly from anethole, the aromatic compound in star anise, green anise and fennel, which dissolves readily in alcohol but very poorly in water. In the bottle, at 45 percent, the ethanol holds all of it in solution, so the liquid stays clear and amber. As water is added, the alcohol falls below the level that can keep the anethole dissolved, and the compound separates out as an emulsion of tiny oil droplets, on the order of a micron across, which scatter light in every direction and turn the drink milky.

Because the droplets form spontaneously and stay suspended without any shaking, chemists sometimes call this the ouzo effect, after the Greek spirit that behaves the same way. The mint syrup changes nothing in that process; its dye simply colors the emulsion, which is why a perroquet looks like a pale green milk rather than a clear green soda. Our Pernod cocktails page goes further into the anise family, including how Pernod, pastis and absinthe differ.

Why water goes in before ice

Pure trans-anethole melts at roughly 21°C, a little below a warm room, which means that the compound is close to solidifying at ordinary temperatures once it is no longer dissolved. When ice touches neat or barely diluted pastis, the liquid at its surface chills sharply, and anethole can crystallize there as fine white flakes or a waxy film that clings to the glass and the cube. French drinkers say the pastis has been cassé, broken. Adding the water first spreads the anethole through a much larger, uniformly cold volume, where it forms the even droplet cloud instead, and any ice dropped in afterward has far less to work against.

This is also why many people skip ice entirely and rely on water straight from the refrigerator, since a perroquet that starts cold does not need melting ice to stay that way, and ice that melts dilutes the drink beyond the intended ratio.

The rest of the family

The perroquet is one of several pastis serves named for what the syrup does to the color, and only it is named for a bird; the others take their names from a tomato, from Moorish cuisine, or from nothing obvious at all.

The database has the Tomate as Ricard, grenadine and water, and a second version, the Ricard Tomate, that uses only a quarter-ounce of grenadine against two ounces of Ricard, which leaves it much drier and closer to a plain pastis. There is no mauresque under that name, but the Momisette is pastis and orgeat lengthened with seltzer, essentially a sparkling mauresque, and La Charentaise goes richer still, layering Ricard, orgeat and cold whole milk without stirring. Orgeat suits anise well. The almond softens the licorice edge. The rourou does not appear in the database, although it is easy to make from the same template with strawberry syrup.

A few further drinks sit nearby without being part of the family. The Hedgehog in the Fog combines pastis with lime, sugar syrup, fresh mint and soda, so that the mint flavor comes from leaves rather than syrup, and the Late Mistral adds vodka and lemon to Ricard and cold water, which makes it stronger and sharper than any café serve. Searching the database for “perroquet” also returns Le Perroquet, which has no anise in it at all: it is gin, Campari and orange juice topped with Champagne, a different drink that happens to share the name.

Choosing the syrup and the pastis

Green mint syrup, the kind sold in French supermarkets as sirop de menthe, is what gives the perroquet its color; clear mint syrup produces the same flavor in a drink that stays the off-white of plain pastis, which defeats the point of the name. The syrup’s sugar also rounds off the bitterness of the licorice in a pastis, so anyone who finds plain pastis too sharp will often find a perroquet easy to drink.

Under EU rules a pastis must be at least 40 percent alcohol and must contain licorice, which gives it a darker, rounder flavor than a straight anise spirit. Ricard and Pastis 51 are the brands most likely to be in a French café; anise spirits from other traditions, such as ouzo or the drier styles of absinthe, will cloud in the same way, though absinthe needs considerably more water before it louches, and our page on absinthe cocktails covers that stronger end of the shelf.

Last modified on November 8, 2026