It's often done very very badly: you see these Slush Puppy type machines with ice churning round and round and they're made with lime syrup rather than fresh lime juice. It’s made with lime juice, tequila, and triple sec - Cointreau, Grand Marnier, that kind of thing. So there's all kinds of things that you can do with it.” 5. Margarita You can use a drop of Fernet-Branca, which is a very bitter Italian liqueur, to make it really bitter. You can play around with the vermouth, you can play around with the gin, you can swap the gin for rye whiskey in which case it becomes a Boulevardier, there are different kinds of mixers you can use. “It's another one you can have an awful lot of fun with.
Now it's just a drink you get everywhere, but it's still a very good drink. Since then it's gone very, very mainstream. It used to be if you ordered a Negroni, you would get respect from the bartender community. “A Negroni is a third gin, a third Campari, and a third Italian vermouth martini rosso. I like a five-to-one ratio, gin to Noilly Prat.” 4. Negroni I feel like the pendulum is swinging back because neat gin, even if it's really, really cold, isn't that great to be honest. Noel Coward saying ‘Nod in the direction of Rome,’ or ‘take your bottle of Noilly Prat and throw it out the window’, that kind of stuff. “There’s lots of macho stuff about how strong your Martini should be. Some people think it comes from Martini, the company, and some say it was invented by a bartender called Martini. There's lots of ideas as to where the name came from some people think it's a corruption of Martinez, which is a cocktail made with sweet gin. You swap the bourbon for gin and you swap the sweet vermouth for dry vermouth. “A Martini is essentially a dry Manhattan made with gin. You can drink it at any time really because it's got a lot of flavor, quite a lot of sweetness, but it's not cloying, it's not too strong.” 3. Martini It does make a very nice aperitif, and it’s very nice to drink on its own. “So this is a mixture of probably a third of something like Martini Rosso and two-thirds of whiskey: Rye is best but you can use Bourbon instead, and you'd stir it like you were making a martini and then strain it into a martini glass. Johnny Walker Black Label, that's very nice in an Old Fashioned.” 2. Manhattan It's wonderful with any dark spirit - a good Jamaican rum or Cognac, for example. “Traditionally you'd use rye whiskey but Bourbon is more normal now. An old-timey cocktail like they used to make before vermouth arrived’. Somebody would say, ‘I don't want any of these new-fashioned cocktails, make me an old-fashioned cocktail. People started making drinks that were a bit like Manhattans. It's probably called the Old Fashioned because some time in the 1850s or 1860s, vermouth arrived in America. It dates from the turn of the 18th to 19th century in America.
“The Old Fashioned is apparently the first cocktail ‘cocktail’ used to be a specific kind of drink, made with alcohol, usually whiskey, with bitters, water, maybe some fruit, ice if you had it. So which are the essential cocktails? Here are five that Jeffreys says you shouldn’t be without: 1. It's for people who like to play around: the mad scientist in all of us appreciates cocktails.” “You can work how dry you like your Martini, how dilute or sweet you like your Old Fashioned, you can try different brands of gin. “You get to play around with them,” says Jeffreys. “There is a historic and glamorous side to them before you even get on to the fact that they taste quite nice.”īars are judged on their ability to make good cocktails: it’s a good chance for bartenders to display their creativity, even when making the classics. “When you're having a Martini at a bar you can feel like Bogart or James Bond or Ava Gardner,” says Henry Jeffreys, author of the forthcoming Cocktail Dictionary. Not only do they allow bartenders to demonstrate their skills, but they offer customers a joyous sense of glamour too. Cocktails are glamorous and historic - and they taste quite nice, too”Īny bar worth its salt needs to serve cocktails. “When you’re having a Martini you can feel like Bogart or James Bond.
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