London’s summer drinks are getting lighter, brighter and rather more colourful

There is a particular kind of drink that seems engineered for a London summer. It must be cold enough to justify carrying through Soho, colourful enough to survive Instagram and interesting enough to persuade people that, actually, £6 or so on a drink was entirely reasonable.

This August, Cocomelt London is leaning firmly into that territory with a limited edition collaboration with coconut water brand Vita Coco, creating three drinks that bring together some of the flavours currently dominating London's café counters: matcha, mango, ube and, naturally for Cocomelt, chocolate.

The Vita Coco Melt menu is available throughout August at Cocomelt's Wardour Street café and takes the Soho chocolate specialist in a slightly lighter direction for summer. Rather than the richer shakes and chocolate led drinks for which it is known, Vita Coco Original Coconut Water forms the base of each creation.

The most obviously summery of the three is the Mango Matcha Cloud, where sweet mango purée and coconut water sit beneath Cocomelt's signature matcha cold foam. Mango and matcha have become increasingly familiar companions, with the fruit's sweetness softening the grassy character of the tea. Coconut water makes the combination considerably lighter than the milk based versions now found across London's cafés.

Then there is the Ube Berry Cloud, arguably the most visually distinctive drink on the menu. Blueberry purée is mixed with coconut water before being topped with creamy ube cold foam.

Ube, the purple yam long familiar in Filipino cooking, has become one of the more conspicuous flavours in contemporary café culture. Its naturally vivid colour has certainly helped, but its gently sweet, slightly nutty character also makes it particularly adaptable to desserts and drinks. Here, paired with blueberry and coconut, it becomes the most tropical of Cocomelt's three new creations.

The surprise may be the simplest drink.

The Coco Cloud combines Cocomelt's signature Belgian chocolate with coconut water, effectively taking the idea of a chocolate shake and stripping away some of its traditional heaviness. Chocolate and coconut are hardly revolutionary companions, but replacing the usual creamy base with coconut water makes considerably more sense when Soho is baking in August sunshine.

The collaboration also reflects how dramatically London's summer drinks menu has expanded. Iced coffee once represented the adventurous end of warm weather café drinking. Now matcha, cold foam, fruit purées and ingredients drawn from Asian and tropical food cultures have become commonplace, with cafés competing to produce the drink that defines a particular summer.

Cocomelt is particularly well positioned for that shift. Its reputation has been built around indulgence, particularly premium Belgian chocolate, but the Vita Coco partnership allows it to play with the same flavours in a format better suited to hot weather. Vita Coco's Original Coconut Water also contains naturally occurring potassium and is high in vitamin C, although most people wandering through Soho are unlikely to be analysing the nutritional proposition quite so closely.

What they will notice is that these are drinks designed specifically for August rather than permanent additions attempting to satisfy everybody throughout the year.

That limited lifespan is part of the appeal. Seasonal menus have become increasingly important to London's café culture, borrowing something from fashion's relentless cycle of newness. A drink appears, takes over social feeds for several weeks and disappears just as another flavour begins its ascent.

Whether mango matcha, ube or coconut proves to be this summer's lasting obsession remains to be seen. Cocomelt has sensibly put all three on the same menu.

The Vita Coco Melt menu is available exclusively at Cocomelt, 132 Wardour Street, London, until August 31. For anyone spending the final weeks of summer in Soho, it offers three more reasons to hope the heat holds out a little longer.