BevX Cocktail List

The Black Manhattan is what happens when a great bartender asks a simple question: what if you replaced sweet Vermouth in a Manhattan with a rich, bittersweet Amaro? The answer, courtesy of Todd Smith at Bourbon & Branch in San Francisco, is a darker, more complex drink that retains the Manhattan's...
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The Red Lion is a 1930s Gin-based cocktail that is a sour that is sweetened with orange Liqueur, frequently Grand Marnier. It is associated with London’s Café Royal. The recipe for the Red Lion first appeared in print in W. J. (“Billy”) Tarling’s Café Royal Cocktail Book in 1937. In the bo...
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This classic fluorescent cocktail, the Blue Hawaii, was invented in 1957 by Harry Yee, legendary head bartender of the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Waikiki, Hawaii – USA. The drink was created in response to a request by Bols, the Dutch liqueur specialist, to utilize their Blue Curaçao. The name is...
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The Pink Lady is a Prohibition-era classic that packs more punch than its pretty pink color suggests. The exact origins are as hazy as this drink, but we do know for certain that it appears in The Bartender’s Book (1951), by Jack Townsend. Recipes vary, but our favorite versions combine London Dry...
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The Jungle Bird was created in 1978 at the Aviary Bar of the Kuala Lumpur Hilton and promptly forgotten for decades. Its rediscovery by bartenders in the 2000s was one of the great finds of the craft cocktail renaissance. Dark Rum and Campari is a pairing that should not work but does — the bitter...
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The Blood and Sand is named for the 1922 Rudolph Valentino film and is one of the rare classic cocktails built on a Scotch base. The combination of Scotch, cherry liqueur, sweet vermouth, and orange juice sounds wrong on paper and tastes startlingly right in the glass. It is sweet, fruity, and compl...
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The Godfather is one of those two-ingredient cocktails that has been hiding in plain sight for decades, dismissed as a relic of the 1970s and never given a proper hearing by the craft cocktail world. That is a shame. Scotch and Amaretto, in the right proportions, produce a drink of real depth and wa...
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Bolero may spark images of a dance or perhaps the sounds of a Latin beat or a very forgettable Bo Derek film circa 1984. Come on now, you put Bo Derek in a provocative outfit, on horseback, in a black bolero… what could go wrong?

Back on track, we would have to confess to finding damn lit...
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Created by Trader Vic Bergeron during World War II, Three Dots and a Dash takes its name from the Morse code symbol for V — as in Victory. It is a complex, Rhum Agricole-anchored tiki drink with allspice dram and Orange Curacao adding depth and intrigue. Like the best tiki cocktails, it manages to...
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The Brown Derby was developed at the Hollywood restaurant of the same name in the 1930s, named after the hat-shaped building that became a Tinseltown icon. It is a very simple cocktail: bourbon, fresh grapefruit juice, and honey syrup. This blend offers more than its ingredients alone. The grapefrui...
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Ada Coleman created the Hanky Panky in the early 1900s for Charles Hawtrey, the English actor and theatrical producer, at the Savoy's American Bar in London. It is one of the most important cocktails in the history of women in bartending — Coleman was among the first female head bartenders at a ma...
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Created by Joaquín Simó at Death & Co in New York in 2011, the Naked and Famous is one of the most celebrated cocktails of the modern era. It takes the equal-parts template of the Last Word and applies it to mezcal — replacing Gin with Mezcal, green Chartreuse with yellow Chartreuse, maraschino...
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The Pisco Sour is the national cocktail of both Peru and Chile — a distinction that has fueled a diplomatic dispute lasting over a century and showing no signs of resolution. We will stay out of that particular fight. What we will say is that when made properly, with quality Peruvian or Chilean pi...
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The Queen's Park Swizzle was created at the Queen's Park Hotel in Port of Spain, Trinidad, and it stands as the definitive expression of the swizzle — the Rum-mint-bitters-citrus template that predates the Mojito and, many would argue, surpasses it. Demerara Rum provides a dark, molasses-rich back...
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The Between the Sheets is a pre-Prohibition classic that emerged in Paris in the 1930s, likely at Harry's New York Bar. It takes the Sidecar's Cognac-orange-lemon formula and splits the base between Cognac and Rum, adding complexity and tropical warmth that the original lacks. The name is provocativ...
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