What are the classic cocktails everyone should know?

Start with a Daiquiri and an Old Fashioned. Between them they cover the two structures — shaken and sour, stirred and spirit-forward — that most of the canon is built on, and each teaches a different half of the technique.

What makes a cocktail a classic rather than just old?

Being a template. A classic is a drink other drinks are versions of: change the base spirit or the modifier and you get another recognised cocktail. Age alone does not do it — plenty of Victorian drinks are simply bad.

Do I need special equipment to make classic cocktails?

Less than you would think. A shaking tin, a jigger, a strainer and decent ice will make almost everything here. The ice matters more than any piece of kit you can buy.

The originals

Classic cocktails

Not simply the old ones. A classic is a drink that set a template — that other drinks are variations of, whether or not the people making them know it.

Recipes here

Guides to go with them

What makes a drink a classic

Survival, mostly. Thousands of cocktails were printed between the 1860s and Prohibition, and the overwhelming majority are deservedly forgotten. The handful that lasted did so because they were built on a proportion that works — a sour, an old fashioned, a highball — and because the proportion turned out to hold no matter what you poured into it.

That is the useful way to read this list. These are not forty separate things to memorise. They are a small number of structures wearing different clothes, and once you can feel the structure, most of the rest of the canon becomes readable at a glance.

Where to start

Learn one sour and one stirred drink properly and you have the whole map. A Daiquiri teaches you balance — spirit, citrus, sugar, and nothing to hide behind. An Old Fashioned teaches you dilution and ice, because there is nothing else in the glass to blame.

Everything else here is those two lessons applied. Change the spirit, add a modifier, swap the sweetener, and you arrive at most of the drinks below without ever learning a new technique.

Pour one

30 classic recipes

Classic cocktails

What makes a drink a classic

Where to start

30 classic recipes

12 Mile Limit

Black Russian

Brandy Crusta

Clover Club

Daiquiri

El Presidente

Gimlet

Golden Daiquiri

Improved Japanese Cocktail

La Louisiane

Lion's Tail

Manhattan

Margarita

Martinez

Martini

Mojito

Moscow Mule

Old Fashioned

Pegu Club

Pendennis Club Cocktail

Sazerac

Scofflaw

Sidecar

The Last Word

Toreador

Traditional Mojito

Vieux Carré

Ward Eight

Whiskey Sour

White Russian

The syrups these drinks keep asking for

Questions, answered

One drink, one story, one bottle worth buying.