Classic Cocktails
726 recipes. The recipes everything else is a variation on.
A classic earns the label by outliving the fashion that produced it. Most of the drinks here were written between about 1860 and 1935, and they survive because their proportions are right rather than because anyone is being nostalgic.
They are also the most useful thing to learn, because modern drinks are overwhelmingly variations on them. Know the Old Fashioned, the Martini, the Manhattan, the Daiquiri and the sour template and you can reverse-engineer most cocktail menus.
Start with one and make it three times, changing one thing each time. That teaches more than making three different drinks once.
Start here
The ones worth knowing before the rest.
Add one more bottle
What a second bottle opens up.
All 726 recipes
Page 16 of 16.
- Deshler Cocktail Dubonnet(R) Rouge, Rye Whiskey, Cointreau(R) Orange Liqueur
- Eye-Opener Light Rum, Triple Sec Liqueur, Pernod(R)
- Gin Sangaree Gin, Carbonated Water, Port
- Pipeline Bacardi(R) Superior Rum, Confectioners' Sugar, Apricot Brandy
- San Francisco Cocktail Sweet Vermouth, Dry Vermouth, Sloe Gin
- Silver Bronx Gin, Orange Juice, Dry Vermouth
Worth reading
- Shake or Stir? The Rule and Its Exceptions Shake anything cloudy, stir anything clear. The rule takes one line, and knowing why it works tells you what to do with the drinks it does not cover.
- The Sour Formula: One Ratio, Twenty Drinks Two parts spirit, one part citrus, one part sweet. Learn the shape and the Daiquiri, the Margarita, the Gimlet and the Whiskey Sour come free.
