Cocktail recipes

The Moscow Mule is proof that a great cocktail can come from a warehouse full of stock nobody wanted. The story goes that in the 1940s a vodka seller, a ginger beer maker and a man with a load of c...

The Bellini was born in Venice, in Harry's Bar, sometime around 1948, and it has never really left. Giuseppe Cipriani created it, tinted the colour of a saint's robe in a Giovanni Bellini painting,...

The Mai Tai has spent decades being ruined by beach bars, buried under pineapple juice, fruit skewers and little paper umbrellas until nobody remembers what it is actually meant to taste like. The ...

The French 75 is one of the most elegant cocktails ever made, and one of the most dangerous. It looks like a glass of celebration, all bubbles and lemon twist, but underneath the champagne there is...

The Tequila Sunrise is pure theatre in a glass. That gradient from deep red at the bottom up to bright orange at the top is not food colouring or clever bartending, it happens all by itself, and it...

The Whiskey Sour is the drink that converts people who think they do not like whiskey. That sharp hit of fresh lemon, a touch of sugar to round it off and a silky foam on top, it takes the whiskey ...

Ask for a tequila cocktail in Mexico and you are far more likely to be handed a Paloma than a Margarita. It is the everyday drink there, the one people actually make at home, long and fizzy and bui...

The Negroni is the drink that separates the casual sipper from the proper cocktail lover, and I mean that fondly. It is bold, it is bittersweet, and it is made from just three ingredients in equal ...

The Old Fashioned is the drink that separates people who like whiskey from people who like hiding whiskey. There is nowhere for it to hide here, no juice, no fizz, no cream, just whiskey, a whisper...

The Cosmopolitan has spent twenty years living down its own reputation. Thanks to a certain nineties TV show it got filed away as a girly, dated, slightly naff drink, which is a real shame, because...

Nobody has ever sipped a Piña Colada and thought about their emails. It is the most unapologetic holiday drink there is, rum, coconut and pineapple blended into something creamy and cold, and the m...

Somewhere around 2018 the Aperol Spritz stopped being an Italian holiday drink and quietly took over every beer garden in Britain, and honestly, fair enough. It is bright orange, lightly bitter, ge...