classic cocktail

classic cocktail is subjective in its definition and has been hotly debated, but the establishment of a canon of classics was an important part of the success of the twenty-first-century cocktail renaissance. Despite the debate, there is broad agreement that, to be considered a classic, a cocktail should satisfy several different requirements. It should be familiar enough among average customers that they order it even when it is not listed on the cocktail menu. Bartenders from high-end craft bars to neighborhood pubs should know its recipe, and the ingredients should be commonly found in most bars. Most importantly, however, it should be well respected and widely accepted as being delicious.

There is no official list of classic cocktails, but pre-Prohibition drinks such as the Old-Fashioned, Manhattan, Martini, Sidecar, Daquiri, and Mojito and more recent ones such as the Bloody Mary, Margarita, and even Cosmopolitan have indisputably achieved this status. (Equally, popular drinks such as the pre-Prohibition Angel’s Tit and Coffee Cocktail and the more modern Godfather and Long Island Iced Tea have been excluded. See Coffee Cocktail.) Some drinks, such as the Sazerac, Negroni, Rob Roy, Pisco Sour, and Caipirinha may be long-standing recipes and considered as worthy of this distinction in some circles but are unknown in others. Other old drinks that have appealed to modern tastes are often ranked as “forgotten classics.” See forgotten classic. With the modern cocktail resurgence, there are a number of new drinks that have been widely discussed as candidates for eventually becoming classics themselves, including the Bramble, Jasmine, Old Cuban, Penicillin, Trident, Chartreuse Swizzle, Little Italy, Red Hook, and Seelbach (which began as a forgotten classic until its rediscoverer admitted that he had in fact invented it). A cocktail becomes a classic not by somebody declaring it so but through the knowledge of its recipe spreading organically through bartenders and customers across the country.

DeGroff, Dale. The Craft of the Cocktail. New York: Clarkson Potter, 2002.

Embury, David. The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks. New York: Doubleday, 1948.

Regan, Gary. The Joy of Mixology. New York: Clarkson Potter, 2003.

By: Robert Hess