The Honey Deuce US Open cocktail is heading into its 19th year as the tournament’s signature drink with sales figures that have turned what began as a modest commission into one of sport’s most recognisable refreshments. More than 740,000 were served across the 2025 edition, according to Grey Goose, with a single-day peak of nearly 60,000, a figure reported by Yahoo Sports.
From a Backyard Blackberry Bush to the Honey Deuce US Open Cocktail Phenomenon
The drink’s origin is less corporate than its scale might suggest. Nick Mautone, the cocktail’s inventor, was approached to create a vodka-based drink for Grey Goose’s second year sponsoring the tournament. The brief was straightforward: something tall, refreshing, and suited to New York in late summer. ‘It needed to be a tall, refreshing, sessionable drink. It’s very hot in New York, and very humid, so you don’t want a spirit-forward drink,’ Mautone has said.
His solution drew on memory as much as mixology. ‘My mother used to make a summer dessert that was made with honeydew and blackberries. We had a blackberry bush in the backyard. She would douse the whole thing with orange juice,’ he recalls. On the way home from a Grey Goose meeting, stopping to pick up ingredients for a dinner party, he developed a modern version of that fruit dessert and found his recipe.
The final formula: Grey Goose vodka, Chambord liqueur, and lemonade, finished with three honeydew melon balls as garnish. An earlier draft had included fresh lemon juice and rosemary citrus syrup for a more complex flavour profile, but the recipe was simplified before launch. Roughly 10,000 were sold in the drink’s first run, Grey Goose brand director Stacy Saltiel told Popsugar. That number now looks almost quaint: cumulative sales have passed 3.5 million since 2011, per Grey Goose’s own figures.
The Numbers Behind the Pink Cup
The cocktail carries a $23 price tag, which, layered on top of tournament entry, is not a trivial outlay. Mautone engineered the recipe with high-traffic bar service in mind, removing any steps that would slow down bartenders during peak periods. That efficiency is part of what has allowed it to scale so dramatically across the two-week event at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.
The drink’s reach now extends well beyond the stadium gates. Molly Horn, chief mixologist and spirits educator at Total Wine & More and a certified sommelier, described the formula’s appeal plainly: ‘At its core, this cocktail is a straightforward yet elevated highball (three ingredients (not counting the honeydew melon garnish), no shaking needed) that centres around winning flavours of blackberry and lemon.’ Horn also recommends sparkling lemonade or elderflower liqueur for a variation, and flags Baron De Casterac as an alternative to Chambord.
The social media dimension has been central to its rise. Mautone has spoken about how the drink’s viral spread felt organic rather than manufactured. ‘The naturalness of how it went viral is really important,’ he said. ‘There’s a lot of people who go to the US Open who are straight-laced, maybe not even posting on social media, but they’re suddenly there and giggling at these honeydew melon balls.’ That unprompted enthusiasm, captured and shared across platforms, has kept the drink in circulation far beyond the fortnight it is officially served.
Alcohol retailer Total Wine & More has tracked the commercial ripple: Grey Goose and Chambord sales rose 243 per cent in the final two weeks of the 2025 US Open compared with the equivalent period before the tournament. The same window in 2024 saw an 800 per cent spike, coinciding with the drink’s rapid traction on social platforms that year.
Rivals Emerge, but Grey Goose Plans a Bigger 2026 Footprint
The Honey Deuce’s dominance has not gone unnoticed by other tournaments. As Front Office Sports has reported, the Australian Open introduced its own contender in 2025: the Lemon Ace, a citrus-and-passionfruit Grey Goose concoction engineered to taste like an Australian summer. It is early evidence that the Honey Deuce’s template (a simple, photogenic, tournament-exclusive drink with a branded cup) is being adopted across the sport.
Grey Goose is not standing still ahead of the 2026 US Open. According to PRNewswire, the brand will extend the tournament experience beyond the stadium through the return of The Last Serve Bar at Grand Central Terminal, taking the Honey Deuce US Open cocktail into one of New York’s highest-footfall public spaces during the event. With the 2025 single-day record sitting at nearly 60,000 served, the 2026 edition is already being positioned as a challenge to break that mark.