Recipe
🥤 DRINK
Tarkhuna
A vivid green tarragon lemonade, herbal and sweet with a cool anise edge, Georgia's beloved homemade soda.
Georgian · easy · serves 6
prep 15 min · cook 10 min
~134 cal · 0g protein · 35g carbs · 0g fat · 0g fiber · 34g sugars · 0g sat fat (estimated, per serving)
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Tarkhuna is Georgia's famous emerald-green soda, and it began, unusually, in a pharmacy. In the late nineteenth century a pharmacist in Tbilisi, Mitrofan Lagidze, started flavouring sparkling water with an extract of Caucasian tarragon (tarkhuna in Georgian), and the vivid green tonic became a beloved regional drink that spread across the Soviet Union.
At home it is made from the fresh herb: tarragon is steeped with sugar into a bright, fragrant syrup, which is then topped up with well-chilled sparkling water. Its striking colour comes from the tarragon itself, and its flavour is herbal, sweet, and faintly aniseed or liquorice-like, unlike anything in the Western soda cabinet.
Cold and refreshing, it is a nostalgic taste of Caucasian summers for anyone who grew up with it, whether the homemade version or the famous bottled one.
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Make it yours
✓ Naturally vegetarian, vegan and gluten-, dairy-, nut-, egg- and pork-free. No swaps needed.
Toggle a diet and the ingredients rewrite themselves with regional substitutes.
🥕 Vegetarian
🌱 Vegan
🌾 Gluten-Free
🥛 Dairy-Free
🥜 Nut-Free
🥚 Egg-Free
🐖 Pork-Free
Dietary labels are a cooking guide, not allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish; we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, read the label on every product you use, and note that a kitchen can cross-contaminate in ways a recipe cannot control.
Ingredients
US
Metric
Serves 6
2 cups packed fresh tarragon
1 cup sugar
1.5 cups water
1 lemon
4 cups sparkling water
Instructions
1
Simmer the sugar and water into a syrup, then take off the heat and steep the tarragon in it for 20 minutes.
2
Strain out the tarragon, pressing to extract the color and flavor, then chill the green syrup.
3
Stir in the lemon juice.
4
Pour a few tablespoons of syrup into each glass and top with cold sparkling water and ice.
Georgian homemade-soda tradition.
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🌏 While it simmers, know your destination
📍
Imereti. Imeruli cheese is what the bread is named for: a fresh cow's-milk cheese, brined and springy and slightly sour, made in the region and used young. The bread is cooked on a dry griddle rather than in an oven, which gives it a blistered surface and means it is made to be eaten within the hour rather than kept.
🗺️
Georgia. Walnuts do the job here that cream does elsewhere, ground into sauces for beans, aubergine and poultry and loosened with vinegar or pomegranate. The spice cupboard runs to blue fenugreek, dried marigold and coriander seed in the blend called khmeli suneli, and khachapuri changes shape as you travel, arriving in Adjara on the Black Sea as an open boat with an egg slid into it.
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Asia. Fermentation is the thread that runs the whole way across: soy sauce and miso, Korean doenjang and kimchi, Southeast Asian fish sauces, the soured batter behind an idli. Chilli is the newcomer among them, arriving only after 1500 with Portuguese and Spanish traders, which makes the heat in Sichuan, Thai and Korean cooking far younger than the fermenting underneath it.
The story behind this dish is up top, worth a read while the pot works.
More from Georgia
Imeruli Khachapuri (Cheese-Stuffed Bread)A golden, pan-baked flatbread sealed around a molten heart of tangy, salty cheese.
LobioKidney beans simmered and half-crushed with walnuts, coriander, and Georgian spice, served in clay with cornbread.
Chvishtari (Cornmeal Cheese Bread)Griddled cornmeal cakes packed with young melting cheese, crisp outside and molten within, from the mountains of western Georgia.
Browse all Georgia recipes →
Good to know
Storing it: Keep chilled and covered, and enjoy within 2 to 3 days.
Make it a Georgia meal
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Drinks
Frequently asked questions
What is Tarkhuna?
A vivid green tarragon lemonade, herbal and sweet with a cool anise edge, Georgia's beloved homemade soda.
Where does Tarkhuna come from?
Tarkhuna is a Georgian dish from Imereti, Georgia.
Can Tarkhuna be made vegan, gluten-free, or dairy-free?
This Tarkhuna recipe includes substitution suggestions for vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, egg-free, and pork-free versions, including several at once such as gluten-free and dairy-free together. Treat them as a starting guide rather than a guarantee, and see the allergen note below.
Is Tarkhuna safe for people with food allergies?
Our dietary labels and substitutions are a cooking guide, not medical or allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish, but we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, always read the label on every product you use, and remember a home or commercial kitchen can cross-contaminate ingredients in ways a recipe cannot control.
How long does Tarkhuna take to make?
About 25 minutes total (15 minutes prep, 10 minutes cooking), serving 6.
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