Cocktails Everyone Should Know How to Make

Pour over ice, top with tonic, add lime. That is the whole lesson, and it is the one every long drink on this list comes back to. The article gives the ratio as anywhere from 1:1 to 1:3 gin to tonic depending on taste and the gin's strength, so pick a number and stick to it for a week. Its origin is British officers in 19th-century India making quinine tonic drinkable — the lime came first, the gin after.

Same build as the gin and tonic, with fresh citrus added. Squeeze 10 ml of lime juice over 45 ml of vodka, fill with ice and top with 120 ml of ginger beer — those are the article's amounts, and they show how little juice a long drink needs. The copper mug is traditional because it takes on the cold of the liquid, though a highball glass does the job. Garnish with a lime wedge.

Tequila's long drink, and the first flavoured soda doing the top-up. Pour the tequila into a highball glass, squeeze in the lime juice, add ice and fill up with pink grapefruit soda — the article's own method, with Squirt or Jarritos being the brands used in Mexico. Salt on the rim is optional here, which makes this the place to practise it before the margarita makes it expected. The name might mean dove, or might come from pomelo.

Lemon and sugar go into the build, so this is your first sour, before the shaker. The IBA method mixes 6 cl of gin, 2.5 cl of lemon juice and 1.5 cl of simple syrup in a tall glass with ice, then tops with 5 cl of soda water: the gin and tonic's top-up, now carrying citrus and sweetness. Jerry Thomas's 1887 recipe used more juice than a gin fizz — gin and sparkling lemonade, the article says.

Now you muddle, starting with mint. Mix the mint sprigs with sugar and lime juice in the glass, add a splash of soda, fill with ice, pour the rum and top with soda water, then a light stir — the IBA preparation, with 45 ml of white rum, 20 ml of fresh lime and six sprigs of mint. It is the Tom Collins with mint and rum, and the last build. Havana is the birthplace, though the exact origin is debated.

The stir begins here, in the serving glass, and sugar meets bitters. Muddle sugar with bitters and water, as you did the mint, add whiskey, then ice and stir, then orange peel and a cherry. The article defines the drink by the muddle and the whiskey — the stir is this list's instruction, and rye or bourbon both work. The name dates to 1880 in print, before the Pendennis Club existed, so its invention claim is treated as myth.

Equal parts gin, vermouth rosso and Campari, over ice in a rocks glass. Vermouth is the new ingredient, and the equal-parts ratio is the point: you taste how a fortified wine softens spirit before the Manhattan asks you to judge the proportion. The IBA method pours everything into the glass, highest alcohol first, so the stir is a few turns in the glass. Florence, 1919 or 1920, Count Camillo Negroni — the usual story, and David Wondrich has questioned the count.

Stirring moves into a mixing glass, and straining comes with it. Stir 50 ml of rye with 20 ml of sweet vermouth and a dash of Angostura bitters over ice, then strain into a chilled cocktail glass and drop in a cherry. Bitters you know from the old fashioned and vermouth from the Negroni; the ratio is the new skill. The Manhattan Club story about Jennie Jerome's banquet is likely fiction — she was in France at the time.

Gin and dry vermouth, stirred with ice and strained, the Manhattan's method, drier. The ratio is the famous argument, so this is the version taught: 2:1 gin to dry vermouth, which the article gives as the drink's most recognisable form by 1922, before 3:1 in the 1930s, 4:1 in the 1940s and 5:1 or 6:1 later on. Learn it at 2:1 — the drier ratios make sense once you know what the vermouth does.

Out comes the shaker. Rum, fresh lime juice and sugar go in with ice, shaken hard and strained into a chilled coupe — the article's amounts are 60 ml of white rum, 20 ml of lime and two bar spoons of superfine sugar. It is the Tom Collins made short, and citrus plus sugar without a top-up means shaking rather than stirring, from here to the whiskey sour. Jennings Cox, an American mining engineer in Cuba around 1898, gets the credit.

Swap the daiquiri's rum for gin and its lime and sugar for lime cordial, then shake with ice and strain the same way. The lesson: sweet and sour can arrive in one bottle. Raymond Chandler's 1953 line says a real gimlet is half gin and half Rose's lime juice and nothing else; modern tastes, the article says, run to four parts gin to one. Start at half and half — go drier only if Chandler's version is too sweet for you.

A shaken sour where a liqueur does the sweetening, and the first drink that expects the salt rim you practised on the paloma. The version taught is the IBA one: tequila, triple sec and fresh lime juice at 10:4:3, shaken with ice, salt on the rim, and no sour mix near it. Esquire ran it as Drink of the Month in December 1953 with the juice of half a lime — far less than bars use now.

The margarita's structure with cognac for tequila and lemon for lime: brandy, orange liqueur and lemon juice, shaken and strained. The new thing is a sugared rim rather than a salted one — the earliest known mention of sugaring the rim is the 1932 book Wet Drinks for Dry People. Cointreau, Grand Marnier, dry curaçao or any triple sec all count. Invented around the end of the First World War in London or Paris, and nobody has settled which.

Egg white is the last technique before the finale. The IBA recipe is three parts bourbon, two parts fresh lemon juice and one part simple syrup, shaken with ice and strained into a chilled glass; add an egg white and the article calls it a Boston sour. For the foam, dry shake first: shake everything without ice for about ten seconds, then add ice and shake again. The oldest printed mention is the Waukesha Plain Dealer in 1870.

Back to stirring, with two bottles nothing else substitutes for. Peychaud's bitters and absinthe are the particular bottles, and the IBA amounts are 50 ml of cognac, 10 ml of absinthe, a sugar cube and two dashes of Peychaud's. Swirl the first glass with a wash of absinthe, build the rest like an old fashioned in a second glass and pour it into the rinsed one. In June 2008 the Louisiana Legislature proclaimed it New Orleans' official cocktail.