TanquerayNo. Ten Gin, 750ml
Distilled with fresh grapefruit, orange and lime. The martini gin, and a good one for the French 75.
$28.59
Seven Classic Cocktails Every Man Should Know How to Make
The martini, the Old Fashioned, the Negroni and four more: the exact specifications, the bottles to keep, the tools that matter and how to host with them.
By Beau Brummell · October 31, 2026 · 10 min read
The Home Bar
A man should be able to make a proper drink in his own house. Not forty drinks, and not anything involving a smoke gun, edible glitter or a syrup he read about on his phone. Seven drinks, made well, from bottles he keeps on hand, cover every occasion from a quiet Tuesday to a dinner for eight. What follows are those seven, written out as recipes, with the bottles worth buying and the few tools that make the difference.
The cocktail is an American invention. In my day a gentleman drank claret at dinner and port after it, and the idea of mixing spirits with sugar and bitters would have been regarded in St James's as an American eccentricity. It was, and the Americans were right.
Before you start: four rules
First, measure. The best bartenders in the world use a jigger for every pour, because a cocktail is a recipe, not a mood. Second, use more ice than seems reasonable, and good ice: large, clear, cold and fresh from the freezer, never the cubes that have been absorbing the smell of the fish fingers since March. Third, citrus must be squeezed the same day; nothing from a bottle. Fourth, keep vermouth in the fridge. It is wine, it oxidises, and an open bottle on the bar cart since last Christmas is the reason most home Manhattans taste of cough syrup.
The seven
Each card gives the official specification of the International Bartenders Association, the body that keeps the world's reference recipes, in millilitres as the IBA writes it, with ounces alongside. The notes underneath are where we allow ourselves an opinion.
No. 1
The Dry Martini
Ingredients
- 60 ml (2 oz) London dry gin
- 10 ml (⅓ oz) dry vermouth
Method
- Chill the glass in the freezer, or fill it with ice water while you mix.
- Pour the gin and vermouth into a mixing glass filled with ice.
- Stir well, about thirty seconds, until the outside of the glass is frosted.
- Strain into the chilled glass.
- Squeeze the oil from a strip of lemon peel over the surface, or add an olive if your guest asks for one.
The martini is the test of a bar and of a host. Six parts gin to one of vermouth is drier than the two-to-one martini of the 1920s and wetter than the 1950s joke of waving the vermouth bottle at the glass, and it is right. A dash of orange bitters is not in the IBA recipe but is welcome. Tanqueray No. Ten and Plymouth are the gins to keep; Dolin is the vermouth. Vodka is permitted, but nobody has ever been impressed by it.
International Bartenders Association official recipe (IBA). Ounces are rounded.
No. 2
The Old Fashioned
Ingredients
- 45 ml (1½ oz) bourbon or rye whiskey
- 1 sugar cube
- A few dashes of Angostura bitters
- A few dashes of plain water
Method
- Put the sugar cube in the glass and saturate it with bitters.
- Add a few dashes of plain water and muddle until the sugar dissolves.
- Fill the glass with ice, ideally one large cube or sphere.
- Add the whiskey and stir gently.
- Garnish with orange and a cherry.
This is the closest surviving drink to the 1806 definition, and the one to learn first. The garnish is orange and a cherry; what it is not is a fruit salad. Muddled cherries, orange wheels and a splash of soda belong to a later, sweeter era. A barspoon of rich demerara syrup can stand in for the sugar cube if you make these often. Michter's and WhistlePig are good places to start; a wheated bourbon makes it softer, a rye makes it drier.
International Bartenders Association official recipe (IBA). Ounces are rounded.
No. 3
The Negroni
Ingredients
- 30 ml (1 oz) gin
- 30 ml (1 oz) Campari
- 30 ml (1 oz) sweet red vermouth
Method
- Fill a chilled old fashioned glass with ice.
- Pour in the gin, Campari and vermouth.
- Stir gently.
- Garnish with half a slice of orange.
Equal parts, impossible to get wrong and the best aperitif ever devised. Tradition credits Count Camillo Negroni, who asked a Florentine bartender to stiffen his Americano with gin around 1919. Cocchi Vermouth di Torino or Carpano Antica Formula is the vermouth. If the evening is long, swap the gin for prosecco and you have a Sbagliato, which is lighter and every bit as good.
International Bartenders Association official recipe (IBA). Ounces are rounded.
No. 4
The Daiquiri
Ingredients
- 60 ml (2 oz) white Cuban rum
- 20 ml (⅔ oz) fresh lime juice
- 2 barspoons superfine sugar
Method
- Put the rum, lime juice and sugar in a shaker and stir until the sugar dissolves.
- Fill with ice and shake hard.
- Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
Forget the frozen, strawberry-flavoured thing served by the litre on a cruise ship. The real daiquiri is three ingredients, sharp, cold and gone in four sips, and it is the best single test of whether a bartender knows what he is doing. It was named after a beach near Santiago de Cuba and perfected at El Floridita in Havana, where Constantino Ribalaigua Vert made them for Hemingway. Use a good light rum such as Banks 5 Island or Planteray 3 Stars. Simple syrup in place of the sugar is easier, and no one will know.
International Bartenders Association official recipe (IBA). Ounces are rounded.
No. 5
The Manhattan
Ingredients
- 50 ml (1⅔ oz) rye whiskey
- 20 ml (⅔ oz) sweet red vermouth
- 1 dash Angostura bitters
Method
- Pour the rye, vermouth and bitters into a mixing glass filled with ice.
- Stir well.
- Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
- Add one good cherry: a Luxardo, not the neon kind.
The Manhattan is the martini's darker, warmer cousin and the drink for a cold evening. Rye was the original whiskey and is still the right one; bourbon makes it sweeter. It is also the drink most improved by fresh vermouth, which is the whole argument for keeping the bottle in the fridge.
International Bartenders Association official recipe (IBA). Ounces are rounded.
No. 6
The Mint Julep
Ingredients
- 60 ml (2 oz) bourbon
- 4 fresh sprigs of mint
- 1 teaspoon powdered sugar
- 2 teaspoons water
Method
- Gently muddle the mint with the sugar and water in the julep cup. Press; do not shred.
- Fill the cup with cracked ice.
- Add the bourbon and stir until the outside of the cup frosts.
- Top with more ice and garnish with a sprig of mint, slapped once to wake it up.
The drink of the Kentucky Derby, and the best reason to own a metal cup. The cup frosts, the ice melts slowly and the drink is as much aroma as taste, which is why the mint goes on top, next to the nose. Make it once a year, on the first Saturday in May, and make it properly.
International Bartenders Association official recipe (IBA). Ounces are rounded.
No. 7
The French 75
Ingredients
- 30 ml (1 oz) gin
- 15 ml (½ oz) fresh lemon juice
- 15 ml (½ oz) sugar syrup
- 60 ml (2 oz) Champagne
Method
- Shake the gin, lemon juice and syrup with ice.
- Strain into a Champagne flute.
- Top with Champagne and stir once, gently.
Named after the French 75-millimetre field gun of the First World War, for reasons that become clear after the second. It is the right drink for a celebration that would otherwise be a glass of Champagne, and it makes a non-vintage Champagne taste like something better. A brut such as Pol Roger or Billecart-Salmon is plenty; save the vintage for drinking on its own.
International Bartenders Association official recipe (IBA). Ounces are rounded.
The bottles behind the seven
Tanqueray
WhistlePig10 Year Rye, 100 proof, 750ml
Ten years old, bottled at a hundred proof on a Vermont farm. Firm enough that a Manhattan still tastes of whiskey.
$69.99
CarpanoAntica Formula sweet vermouth, 750ml
Rich, vanilla-dark Italian vermouth for the Negroni and the Manhattan. Refrigerate after opening.
$33.99
A brief word on the Vesper
Every man of a certain age has tried to order the Vesper, and most bars make it badly, because Kina Lillet no longer exists. The IBA now specifies Lillet Blanc; Cocchi Americano is closer to the bitter original. It is a fine drink and an enormous one; treat it as an occasional party trick rather than a habit.
Off the list
The Vesper
Ingredients
- 45 ml (1½ oz) gin
- 15 ml (½ oz) vodka
- 7.5 ml (¼ oz) Lillet Blanc
Method
- Pour the gin, vodka and Lillet into a shaker filled with ice.
- Shake, as Bond insisted, and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
- Garnish with a long piece of lemon zest.
Bond ordered his in a deep Champagne goblet with a large thin slice of lemon peel. Stirring makes it silkier, but on this one point the author outranks the bartender.
International Bartenders Association official recipe (IBA). Ounces are rounded.
The bar: what you actually need
The tools are few and should be good. A heavy Japanese mixing glass, a long weighted barspoon, a Japanese-style jigger marked in quarter ounces, a Hawthorne strainer and a pair of weighted shaker tins: Cocktail Kingdom makes the professional standard for all of them. Add a mould or press for clear ice, a sharp Y-peeler for twists and a hand juicer. That is the entire kit, and it fits in a drawer.
The kit
Cocktail KingdomYarai mixing glass, 675ml
Seamless, heavy and cut in the Japanese yarai pattern: the glass most serious bars stir in.
Cocktail KingdomKoriko weighted shaking tins, gold-plated
A pair of tins that seal with a tap and part with another. The daiquiri and French 75 need nothing else.
Cocktail Kingdom70mm ice ball press, gold finish
Melts a block of clear ice into a perfect sphere. Extravagant, and the Old Fashioned is better for it.
The glassware matters more than people think. A stemmed coupe or Nick & Nora keeps a cold drink cold and a warm hand away from it; a heavy rocks glass makes an Old Fashioned feel like one. Buy six of each from Riedel, Nude or, for the rocks glasses, Baccarat, and never serve a stirred drink in a pint glass. There is more on glassware and the bottles worth owning in How to Drink Like a Gentleman.
The bottles are the short list implied above: a London dry gin, a bourbon, a rye, a light rum, Campari, a dry and a sweet vermouth, Angostura and orange bitters, and a bottle of Champagne in the fridge. Ten bottles, seven classic drinks and every guest accounted for.
Hosting with cocktails
Choose one drink for the evening and make it well, rather than taking orders like a short-staffed hotel bar. Batch it in advance if there are more than six of you: stirred drinks can be mixed, diluted with about a fifth of their volume in water and kept in the freezer, then poured straight into chilled glasses. Have something good and non-alcoholic on hand as well; in 2026 there is always someone at the table who is not drinking, and a proper alcohol-free option is a courtesy, not a concession.
Then stop at two. A martini is strong, and the host is the one person at the party who must remember it.
Five books for the bar
1
Death & Co: Modern Classic Cocktails
David Kaplan, Nick Fauchald and Alex Day
The house bible of the New York bar that set the standard for the modern cocktail revival. The specifications are exact and the method sections teach more than most bartending courses.
Get the book →
2
The Craft of the Cocktail
Dale DeGroff
The book by the man who brought fresh juice and classic recipes back to the Rainbow Room in the late 1980s, and so, arguably, to everyone else.
Get the book →
3
The Joy of Mixology
Gary Regan
The best explanation of why cocktails work, organised by family rather than alphabet, so that learning one drink teaches you ten.
Get the book →
4
Imbibe!
David Wondrich
The history of the American bar through Jerry Thomas, its first celebrity. Scholarly, funny and full of recipes nobody has made properly in a century.
Get the book →
5
Liquid Intelligence
Dave Arnold
For the man who wants to know why clear ice matters and what dilution does. Part science text, part cookbook, entirely absorbing.
Get the book →The short version
Learn seven drinks. Measure everything, use good ice, squeeze citrus the same day and keep the vermouth cold. Stir spirits, shake citrus, serve in the right glass, and stop at two.
Classic cocktails: frequently asked questions
What cocktails should every man know how to make?
The martini, the Old Fashioned, the Negroni, the daiquiri, the Manhattan, the mint julep and the French 75. Between them they cover gin, whiskey, rum and Champagne, and every occasion from an aperitif to a celebration.
Should a martini be shaken or stirred?
Stirred. A drink made entirely of spirits, like a martini or a Manhattan, should be stirred with ice for about thirty seconds so that it is cold and silky. Drinks containing citrus juice, like a daiquiri, should be shaken.
What do you need for a home bar?
A mixing glass, a barspoon, a jigger, a Hawthorne strainer and a pair of shaker tins, plus a mould for large clear ice, a peeler and a juicer. For bottles: a London dry gin, a bourbon, a rye, a light rum, Campari, dry and sweet vermouth, Angostura and orange bitters, and Champagne.
How should vermouth be stored?
In the fridge, once opened. Vermouth is a fortified wine and oxidises within weeks at room temperature, which is the most common reason home Manhattans and martinis taste wrong.
What is the best cocktail book?
Death & Co: Modern Classic Cocktails for exact modern specifications, and Dale DeGroff's The Craft of the Cocktail for the classics. Gary Regan's The Joy of Mixology best explains why drinks work.
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