1. Negroni
Ingredients: Campari, sweet vermouth, gin
Backstory: Cocktail historians have tried to track down the Negroni Zero for decades, but the still most-repeated story (possibly apocryphal) is that Count Camillo Negroni once asked a Café Casoni bartender to improve his Americano (Campari, sweet vermouth, and club soda) by using gin instead of soda water. A bit of a “bartender’s handshake” back in the day, the drink is rife for creating inventive variants, thanks to its equal parts sweet, bitter, and boozy, and played a crucial role in our modern cocktail revival.
Why it’s a classic: “Thank you Count Camillo Negroni for acquiring a taste for strong liquor while working as a rodeo clown in America. The need to satisfy your craving led the way to transforming the low ABV Americano into the paradigmatic Negroni. Hands down my favorite classic drink. Balancing sweet, bitter and strong to create the perfect cocktail."—Laboy
Starter recipe:
1 oz London dry gin
1 oz sweet vermouth
1 oz Campari
Stir with ice for 20-30 seconds. Strain into coupe glass. Garnish with orange peel.
2. Gin & Tonic
Ingredients: London Dry gin, tonic water, lime wedge
Backstory: It might seem hard to write the history of a drink in which every ingredient is in the name. Seems self-evident, no? Still, some genius was the first to combine the two—in this case, the clever gents in the army of the British East India Company. It wasn’t just a tasty way to get their jollies off while bored. With malaria present in 1800s India, the soldiers had taken to mixing the bitter cure-all quinine with water, sugar, lime, and, yes, gin.
Why it’s a classic: “It's the perfect, go-to warm weather drink. The lovely botanicals of a well-made gin combined with a good quinine and a healthy squeeze of a lime wedge is just what the doctor prescribed.”—Laboy
Starter recipe:
Gin (amount to preference)
Tonic water (amount to preference)
Pour over ice, garnish with lime wedge
3. Martini
Ingredients: Gin or vodka, dry vermouth, orange bitters (optional for gin, not necessary for vodka)
Backstory: Mr. Bond may have made it a household name, but the most famous of all cocktails had been around a century earlier. The Italian vermouth brand Martini appears in 1863, which may lend the drink its name. At the same time, though, in San Francisco, something called the Martinez had become a popular local libation. The Martinez not only had gin and vermouth, but also bitters and Maraschino. Once those latter two ingredients were stripped away, the classic Martini had emerged. It’s a drink so simple that every Martini lover eventually settles on their own preferred recipe, whether it's one that's super-dry, way-dirty, on the rocks or off.
Why it’s a classic: "Elegant botanicals from the gin are rounded out by the dry vermouth, then tied together either by a brine-y olive or the citrus essence of a lemon twist. This classic is as elegant as it gets for the mature imbiber."—Laboy
Starter recipe:
2 oz gin
1 oz dry vermouth
Add contents to ice-filled mixing glass or metal shaker. Stir, don’t shake, for about 10 seconds. Strain into a coupe or cocktail glass and garnish with a lemon peel.
4. Manhattan
Ingredients: Bourbon or rye whiskey, sweet vermouth, bitters
Backstory: We presume the cocktail was first poured in Manhattan, but whether that was at the snooty Manhattan Club in the 1870s or in other locales on the isle in the years beforehand has yet to be determined. The drink has always had sweet vermouth, bitters, and whiskey, but over the years that latter ingredient has jumped around between bourbon, rye, and even Canadian Club. As rye made its triumphant return in the last decade, it has come to rule the roost. And new variants of the easily-made, 2:1 cocktail have also emerged, many with Brooklyn neighborhood names like the Red Hook and Bensonhurst.
Why it’s a classic: “A Manhattan brings the spiciness of rye whiskey balanced by the sweetness of fortified wine vermouth. This is a great entry level cocktail for the person just discovering American whiskey, yet still a joy for the more developed cocktail consumer.”—Laboy
Starter recipe:
2 oz rye whiskey
1 oz sweet vermouth
2 dashes Angostura bitters
Stir the ingredients with cracked ice, then strain into in a chilled coupe. Garnish with an orange twist or brandied cherry (none of that cheap maraschino bullshit).
5. Daiquiri
Ingredients: White rum, fresh squeezed lime juice, sugar
Backstory: By now one of the most oft-bastardized drinks, the original daiquiri didn't come in some Slurpee-like contraption on the back bar. It was said to be invented in the town of Santiago de Cuba by an American during the Spanish-American War. By the early-1900s, it had made its way to America where it became the favorite drink of everyone from JFK to Hemingway (though, the “Hemingway Daiquiri” is now a slightly different variant). It was likewise the favored drink of the late Sasha Petraske, one of the most influential personas in the modern cocktail revival, who helped his patrons learn how this drink should actually be made.
Why it’s a classic: “The Daiquiri is a delicious combination of sweet, sour, and strong. Very easy to make, but just as easy to mess up. This is the ‘Hey chef, make me the perfect omelet’ of the bartender world.”—Laboy
Starter recipe:
2 oz white rum
1 oz fresh-squeezed lime juice
¾ oz simple syrup
Combine ingredient in a mixing glass with ice and shake well. Strain into a coupe.
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