Easy Bartender Drinks

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We scoured the internet. We talked to every bartender we know.

  1. Find the best Bartenders ideas on Food & Wine with recipes that are fast & easy. Food & Wine goes way beyond mere eating and drinking. We're on a mission to find the most exciting places, new.
  2. Easy cocktails that are super simple to recreate at home when entertaining - cocktails that don’t contain a lot of extravagant ingredients, only require basi.
  3. Highballs are tall, simple mixed drinks that are easy to remember and make. They're the refreshing drinks that are a hit at happy hour and a perfect way to begin your bartending experience.

Good bartenders pride themselves on being knowledgeable about cocktail recipes and proficient in the art of properly serving their guests and patrons. With a healthy repertoire of popular mixed drink recipes and the right ingredients at your disposal, you can be the life of any gathering. Well drinks are ones in which the patron doesn't specify a brand, so the bartender will pick up the whiskey, rum, or tequila from the well. On the flip side, if you call out a specific brand of liquor, you are ordering a call drink. For instance, you might order a Jack and Coke rather than.

And we put together an epic bartender drink recipes and bartender drinks list. We broke them down by three categories. You don't need a bartending license to master them.

First, we included common cocktails or common drinks. These are the most popular cocktails out there. They’re common drinks because everyone orders them.

Second, we’ve got basic cocktails. These are cocktails that people love that are also remarkably easy to make. You’ve likely already stocked a full bar liquor list with everything you’ll need. If not, you'll learn the 86 meaning pretty quickly.

And finally, there are the classic drinks. These may not be the most popular or the easiest, but every bartender worth their salt knows them, and they’re profitable cocktails. They’re just in the genetics of bartending.

For each cocktail on the list, we included the ingredients, the steps, and some arguably interesting information. We also included a few quick tips to make each cocktail sing, from suggested glassware to popular substitutions. So if you’re looking for bartender drinks, here you go. These are the 18 drinks bartenders should know—from common mix drinks to classic cocktails featuring different types of alcohol.

For further mixological reading, check out our in-depth seasonal guides for spring cocktails, summer cocktails, fall cocktails, and winter cocktails.

A Note on How to Use this Bartender Drinks List

There are some terms in this bartender drinks list that aren’t standardized or are otherwise vague. For consistency, here’s what we mean when we use certain units of measurement or terms:

  • Shot: 1.5 oz. (There are about 17 shots in a fifth of alcohol, the standard liquor bottle size. The more you know.)
  • Dash: Approximately 10 single drops
  • Pinch: The amount that fits between your thumb and index finger
  • Top with: Fill remaining volume of glass with
  • Zest: Scrape the colored fruit skin off, leaving behind white pith
  • Twist: A thin piece of peel from a citrus fruit, twisted over and into a cocktail (and usually left in the cocktail or on the rim of the glassware)

See our bartending dictionary for more useful mixological terms.

Common Cocktails Every Bartender Should Know

These are the most popular cocktails in the U.S. Don’t let the word common fool you. They’re common cocktails because everyone’s ordering them. And that means they’re drinks bartenders should know. Stick to the standard liquor pour and standard wine pour to maximize the number of cocktails you get out of your well liquor.

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Margarita

The margarita is the most popular cocktail in America. It’s also the most popular cocktail in every major U.S. market except Chicago, where margaritas are strangely not even in the top 5. What’s even more remarkable is that margaritas cost almost 50 cents more than the national average cocktail price of $9 and they’re still the most popular cocktail. Bartenders can’t afford not to know how to make margaritas at the drop of a hat. Especially during afternoons and early evenings, when margaritas are most popular. They're also the perfect chance to try and upsell a customer.

Margarita Ingredients

  • 2 oz. tequila
  • 1 oz. Cointreau
  • 1 oz. lime juice
  • 1 lime slice
  • 1 pinch salt (for salted rim)

How to Make a Margarita

  1. Create salted rim (coat rim of glass with salt) and fill with ice
  2. Add tequila, Cointreau, lime juice, and ice to a shaker. Shake.
  3. Strain into glass
  4. Garnish with lime slice

Tips for Making a Margarita

  • Shake, never stir, a margarita
  • Always use 100% agave tequila

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Martini

Martinis are probably the easiest cocktail to make in the whole wide world. They definitely deserve a spot in our easy, basic cocktails section. If not for one thing: they’re ridiculously popular. They are the 2nd most popular drink in the U.S. behind the margarita. They’re also most frequently enjoyed at night. That says a lot about the martini. Gin is included in some aphrodisiac drinks, after all. Since its invention in 1863, it’s held a sort of effortless mystique perfectly at home when darkness falls. Learn to make a perfect one.

Martini Ingredients

  • 3 oz. gin
  • 1.5 oz. dry vermouth
  • 1 speared olive or lemon twist

How to Make a Martini

  1. Pour gin and vermouth into a mixer with ice cubes, stir
  2. Strain into a chilled martini glass
  3. Garnish with an olive or lemon twist

Tips for Making a Martini

  • Chill some martini glasses in a freezer to make sure you have properly chilled glasses ready to go
  • Stir for 30 seconds
  • Cut the lemon twist over the martini glass, to capture any falling zest

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Old Fashioned

The old fashioned is the original cocktail. There was a time when there weren’t thousands of cocktails. There was just one cocktail. And it was defined in 1806 as “a potent concoction of spirits, bitters, water, and sugar.” If you had spirits, bitters, water, and sugar, you could make the cocktail. Make it with bourbon, brandy, or rye, it didn't matter. It was a simpler time. Of course, it wasn’t called an old fashioned back then. It was only after the invention of hundreds of new cocktails that the drinking community looked back at the original recipe with nostalgia. “Give me a cocktail,” they’d say. “What kind?” the barkeep would ask. “One of those old fashioned ones.”

Old Fashioned Ingredients

  • 1.5 oz. bourbon whiskey
  • 1 sugar cube
  • 2 dashes Angostura bitters
  • 1 teaspoon water
  • 1 orange slice or cherry

How to Make an Old Fashioned

  1. Place sugar cube in old fashioned glass and cover in bitters
  2. Add a teaspoon of water, muddle until sugar cube dissolved
  3. Fill glass with ice, add whiskey
  4. Garnish with orange slice or cherry

Tips for Making an Old Fashioned

  • The traditional recipe calls for bourbon, but rye whiskey, scotch, and brandy are popular substitutes for those who want less of the vanilla and caramel notes bourbon is known for
  • If sugar cubes aren’t handy or there’s no time or space to muddle, .75 oz. simple syrup can replace the sugar cube

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Mimosa

The mimosa is the 4th most popular cocktail in the U.S. It’s, unsurprisingly, most popular during the morning and afternoon. It’s said that a bartender at the Ritz in Paris invented the mimosa in 1925. It’s also said that it was invented around the turn of the 20th century in the Mediterranean. Though, that’s maybe doing some disservice to the Spaniards who have been drinking orange juice and sparkling wine for centuries. Who can really say where these things come from? It gets its name from the yellow-flowering mimosa plant. That we do know. If you have a brunch service, expect to go through many wine bottle sizes or cases of wine on this cocktail.

Mimosa Ingredients

  • 2.5 oz. Champagne or sparkling wine
  • 2.5 oz. orange juice
  • 1 orange slice

How to Make a Mimosa

  1. Pour Champagne in Champagne flute
  2. Add orange juice
  3. Garnish with orange slice

Tips for Making a Mimosa

  • Use a dry sparkling wine with sweeter fresh-squeezed orange juice and a sweeter sparkling wine with tart orange juice from concentrate
  • If you’re making pitchers of mimosas, don’t pre-mix it too far in advance or you’ll lose the carbonation; 10-15 minutes before serving is about as far in advance as is ideal

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Moscow Mule

The Moscow Mule is the 5th most popular cocktail in the good ol’ U.S.A. That was surprising to us because Moscow Mules require a set of hardware that a lot of popular cocktails don’t. To serve a Moscow Mule properly, you need chilled mugs of copper. Either every bar across the country has those or they’re not serving Moscow Mules in copper mugs. Either way, it’s okay. We’re not the Moscow Mule police. Enjoy as you would enjoy, for the Moscow Mule is enjoyable if it's anything.

Moscow Mule Ingredients

  • 4 oz. ginger beer
  • 1.5 oz. vodka
  • 1 teaspoon lime juice
  • 1 lime slice

How to Make a Moscow Mule

  1. Combine ginger beer and vodka in a highball glass full of ice
  2. Add lime juice, stir
  3. Garnish with lime slice

Tips for Making a Moscow Mule

  • Choose a spicy, extra-gingery ginger beer to avoid the feeling of a vodka ginger ale
  • Serve the drink in a chilled copper mug

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Cosmopolitan

The cosmopolitan is credited to Toby Cecchini of Manhattan’s The Odeon restaurant in 1987. In the grand scheme of cocktails, the cosmo is young. There is a similar recipe from the 1930s that calls for gin, Cointreau, lemon juice, and raspberry syrup. Like most cocktails, there are multiple sources claiming multiple creation stories. What we do know is that it gained popularity like mad in the 1990s on the back of Carrie Bradshaw and now single-handedly represents a certain type of social sophistication.

Cosmopolitan Ingredients

  • 1.5 oz. vodka
  • 1 oz cranberry juice
  • .5 oz. Cointreau
  • .5 oz. fresh lime juice
  • 1 lime or lemon wheel

How to Make a Cosmopolitan

  1. Pour vodka, cranberry juice, Cointreau, and lime juice into a shaker with ice cubes, shake
  2. Strain into cocktail glass
  3. Garnish with lime or lemon wheel

Tips for Making a Cosmopolitan

  • Cut the lemon twist over the cocktail glass to capture any falling zest
  • Shake vigorously until the shaker is so cold your hands sting

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Bloody Mary

The origin of the name Bloody Mary, like the drink’s origins, are murky. Queen Mary I of England, Hollywood star Mary Pickford, the girlfriend of the owner of a bar called Bucket of Blood. All potential origins for the name. It’s hard to say how this cocktail got its name. So let’s just appreciate it for what it is: a cool name.

Easy Bartender Drinks

The Blood Mary is a concept at this point. Like a sandwich or a taco. There isn’t a single recipe, but some general rules to follow when making one. But whatever recipe you end up with, you’ll have a classic fall cocktail on your hands. The Bloody Mary recipe here is very simple, yet very delicious.

Bloody Mary Ingredients

  • 2 oz. vodka
  • 6 oz. tomato juice
  • 1 tablespoon ground horseradish
  • 2 dashes hot sauce
  • 2 dashes Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 pinch celery salt
  • 1 pinch ground black pepper
  • 1 lemon slice
  • 1 celery stalk
  • 2 speared green olives

How to Make a Bloody Mary

  1. Coat the rim of a highball glass with celery salt, fill with with ice
  2. Squeeze juice of lemon slice into shaker, add vodka, tomato juice, horseradish, hot sauce, worcestershire sauce, and black pepper and shake with ice
  3. Strain shaker into highball glass
  4. Garnish with a celery stalk and green olive spear

Tips for Making a Bloody Mary

  • Any hot sauce can be used, though Tabasco is the traditional choice
  • Anything goes with garnishes: meat sticks, pickled vegetables, cheese
  • Serve with a sidecar of beer for best possible guest experience

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Basic Cocktails Every Bartender Should Know

Basic in this sense means easy to make. All good basic bartending drinks should be simple to whip up on a busy shift. Recommend them when you’re slammed and you’ll set yourself up for success. Such is the magic of basic bartending drinks.

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‍Aperol Spritz

Padua, Italy, 1919. The precocious Barbieri brothers got together to pull off their greatest stunt yet: creating a fun, refreshing alternative to the Venetian combination of white wine and soda. The great part about the Aperol spritz is that Aperol is a potable bitters. It’s good for your digestion. It’s also relatively low in alcohol, with 11%. The ingredients and the method are simple, making it a masterful basic bartending drink. All together, the Aperol Spritz is a perfect light afternoon drink for a summer lunch.

‍Aperol Spritz Ingredients

  • 3 oz. Prosecco
  • 3 oz. Aperol
  • 1 orange slice

How to Make a Aperol Spritz

  1. Add ice to rocks or old-fashioned glass
  2. Pour in Aperol, then Prosecco
  3. Top with club soda
  4. Garnish with orange slice

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Whiskey Sour

The whiskey sour is the single best summer bourbon cocktail. The great state of Wisconsin has the honor of being the first location this classic cocktail was mentioned in print—back in 1870. Thank you, Waukesha Plain Dealer.

“Sours” are a family of classic drinks and more accurately thought of as a principle of mixology. They're one of the oldest approaches to making classic drinks. It’s a simple, well-worn formula: base alcohol + sour mixer + sweetener. A gimlet, for example, is basically a sour because Rose’s Lime isn’t lime juice, but a sweetened lime cordial.

Whiskey Sour Ingredients

  • 1.5 oz. bourbon whiskey
  • 1 oz. lemon juice
  • .5 oz. simple syrup
  • 1 cherry
  • 1 orange slice

How to Make a Whiskey Sour

  1. Add whiskey, lemon juice, and simple syrup to shaker without ice cubes, shake
  2. Strain into old-fashioned glass full of ice
  3. Garnish with cherry and orange slice

Tips for Making a Whiskey Sour

  • Add an egg white into the shaker with the whiskey, lemon juice, and simple syrup for the most traditional whiskey sour possible
  • Shake the cocktail without ice—also called a dry shake—vigorously to generate as much froth as possible
  • Use 1.5 oz. of sour mix instead of lemon juice and simple syrup if desired

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White Russian

The White Russian is a Black Russian with cream added. They have nothing to do with Russia besides their use of vodka. And vodka was created in Poland. Just one of those things, I guess.

A Belgian named Gustave Tops invented the cocktail in 1949 in honor of the U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg’s visit to Brussels. We’ve now mentioned five countries in the last few sentences. You can be forgiven if you think the origin story of the White Russian doesn’t follow a logical narrative thread.

White Russian Ingredients

  • .75 oz. coffee liqueur
  • 1.75 oz. vodka
  • 1 oz. cream

How to Make a White Russian

  1. Add ice to rocks or old-fashioned glass
  2. Add coffee liqueur and vodka
  3. Top off with cream
  4. Tell them 'the dude' sent you

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Gimlet

The gimlet is a product of circumstance versus creativity, though honed and perfected with time. Its origins are at sea, when limes were mandatory rations for British sailors to battle scurvy. Gin was the drink of choice for many British sailors of the time. It was also a natural complement to the limes they were required to eat. “You must eat this lime” is a phrase sadly resigned to this part of history. The gin and lime juice made each other more palatable and countless seamen avoided vitamin deficiency. It’s a basic cocktail if we’ve ever seen one. And we love it for that.

Gimlet Ingredients

  • 2 oz. gin
  • 1 oz. lime juice
  • 1 lime wheel

How to Make a Gimlet

  1. Add gin and lime juice to shaker with ice cubes, shake
  2. Strain into chilled cocktail or martini glass
  3. Garnish with lime wheel

Tips for Making a Gimlet

  • Use a lime cordial like Rose’s Sweetened Lime Juice instead of the fresh lime juice for sweeter drink
  • The gin can be switched out for vodka, creating the popular vodka gimlet

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Daiquiri

The daiquiri is a family of cocktails and holds an esteemed position in the basic cocktail pantheon. It's one of the “six basic drinks” inThe Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, an epic and influential 1948 cocktail book. The name is from a Cuban iron mine where an American mining engineer named Jennings Cox was stationed in Cuba in the 1890s. And that iron mine takes the name of the nearby beach, Daiquiri Beach.

The drink found its way to the NYC bar scene in the early 1900s and stayed under the radar until the 1940s. Rum was much easier to come by during WWII than whiskey and vodka. FDR’s “Good Neighbor” policy increased trade incentives between the U.S. and Latin America.

Daiquiri Ingredients

  • 1.5 oz. rum
  • 1 oz. lime juice
  • .5 oz. simple syrup
  • 1 lime twist

How to Make a Daiquiri

  1. Pour all ingredients into a shaker with ice cubes, shake
  2. Strain into chilled cocktail glass
  3. Garnish with lime twist or wedge

Tips for Making a Daiquiri

  • Make your own simple syrup using 2:1 cane sugar to water in a saucepan
  • Shake until the shaker tin frosts on the outside

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Classic Drinks Every Bartender Should Know

Easy Bartender Drinks Recipes

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Boulevardier

Credit to Erskine Gwynne, an American writer based in Paris, for the creation of this perfect classic cocktail in the 1920s. With the completion of the redesign of Paris’s urban environment in the late 19th century, there appeared across the city huge, wide-open boulevards. For one of the first times in history, a city was designed to be experienced instead of simply lived in and used. The folks who took to leisurely strolling these new boulevards and open spaces were known as flâneurs or boulevardiers. They embraced a sort of fashionable urban exploration.

The original boulevardier recipe is made with bourbon. But most bartenders today recommend rye because the spice creates a rounder flavor with the sweet vermouth. And rye boulevardiers are fantastic, no doubt. But around here we stick with Erskine’s original recipe.

Boulevardier Ingredients

  • 1.5 oz. rye or bourbon whiskey
  • 1 oz. Campari
  • 1 oz. sweet vermouth
  • 1 orange twist

How to Make a Boulevardier

  1. Add whiskey, Campari, and vermouth to shaker with ice, stir
  2. Strain into rocks glass with a few ice cubes in it
  3. Garnish with orange twist

Tips for Making a Boulevardier

  • Serve in a lowball glass for maximum class
  • Like the other famous cocktail with whiskey and vermouth, the Manhattan, a cocktail cherry can be used as a garnish for a sweeter, more playful version

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Gin Fizz

The defining feature of a fizz, which is a family of cocktails, is the combination of acidic juice and fizzy water. Created in New Orleans around the 1870s, the drink became popular in the U.S. in the first half of the 20th century. It got so popular, in fact, that bars needed to hire entire teams of bartenders to take shifts making the darn things.

And then around 1950, the domestic U.S. popularity couldn’t contain itself. The drink went international. The rest is history. Folks usually put gin, whiskey, and in fizzes, but gin is the most popular. It’s certainly one of our favorite classic cocktails.

Gin Fizz Ingredients

  • 1.75 oz. gin
  • 1 oz lemon juice
  • .75 oz. simple syrup
  • Club soda
  • 1 lemon wedge

How to Make a Gin Fizz

  1. Pour all ingredients in a shaker with ice cubes, shake
  2. Strain into an 8 oz. glass with no ice in it
  3. Top with club soda
  4. Garnish with lemon wedge or twist

Tips for Making a Gin Fizz

  • The more fizz, the better. To maximize the froth, shake once without ice, then add the ice and shake again.
  • Add an egg white into the shaker for the traditional gin fizz
  • To make a Tom Collins, strain into a highball glass full of ice

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Sazerac

If you’ve ever heard of Peychaud’s bitters, you’ve heard of the apothecary who is credited with creating the Sazerac. Antoine Amédée Peychaud came to New Orleans from the Caribbean islands in the early 19th century and set up shop selling bitters from a proprietary family recipe. A local barkeep used imported Cognac to make a cocktail that a local apothecary had created. And it grew evermore popular with the years.

Sazerac Ingredients

  • 1.5 oz. Cognac
  • .25 oz. absinthe
  • 3 dashes Peychaud’s bitters (here's a little primer about what bitters are made of and used for)
  • 1 teaspoon water
  • 1 sugar cube
  • 1 lemon peel

How to Make a Sazerac

  1. Rinse chilled old-fashioned glass with absinthe, set aside
  2. In mixing glass, muddle bitters, sugar cube, and water
  3. Add whiskey or Cognac to mixing glass, stir
  4. Strain into old-fashioned glass, garnish with lemon peel

Tips for Making a Sazerac

  • Add a combination of Angostura and Peychaud’s bitters for a more complex flavor profile
  • Substitute the Cognac with rye whiskey for a slightly spicier, drier cocktail

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Drinks

Negroni

James Bond, in the stories and movies, has at least twice ordered an Americano cocktail. It’s Campari, sweet vermouth, and sparkling water. And Bond prefers Perrier in his Americanos, thank you very much.

Sounds like a pretty refreshing drink, the Americano. Imagine coming home from a hard day’s work and sipping on one. Pretty good. Now imagine coming home from a really hard day’s work and sipping on one. Could probably be a little stronger.

Algerian font for mac. That’s what Pascal-Olivier de Negroni thought when he was enjoying his favorite cocktail after a hard day’s work as a general in the French military. When you spend your days worrying about all sorts of men-at-arms, armored cavalry, and the looming Prussian threat, you need a little something more than Campari to take the edge of. He asked a bartender to throw a shot of gin in his Americano, and the Negroni was born.

Negroni Ingredients

  • 1 oz. gin
  • 1 oz. Campari
  • 1 oz. sweet vermouth
  • 1 orange peel

How to Make a Negroni

  1. Add all ingredients to a shaker with ice cubes, stir
  2. Strain into rocks glass full of ice
  3. Garnish with orange peel

Tips for Making a Negroni

  • Don’t rub the orange peel on the glass rim
  • Use a full-bodied, bold gin to compete with the very flavorful Campari for a balanced flavor

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Manhattan

Back in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Frisian island of Fohr was known for its whaling community. It’s not far from mainland Germany, but has access to the whaling bounty of the North Sea. The pursuit of whales took these folks all the way to America—New England to be precise. That's where much of the whaling industry had consolidated.

At the tail end of the whaling era, mixing rye whiskey, sweet vermouth, and bitters became popular in New York City. And it spread to the rest of the region—Hartford, Connecticut, specifically. The whalers from Fohr picked up the habit there. Heading back to their homeland because work dried up, they brought the recipe and their appetite for it with them.

To this day, the little island of less than 9,000 people is in love with it. They drink it for lunch, for dinner, as a nightcap, for special occasions. Pictures of it adorn restaurants and menus. Bartenders specialize in it. And people seek it out constantly.

Manhattan Ingredients

  • 2 oz. rye, bourbon, or Canadian whiskey
  • .75 oz. sweet vermouth
  • 1 dash Angostura bitters
  • 1 cherry

How to Make a Manhattan

  1. Pour whiskey, vermouth, and bitters into a shaker with ice cubes, stir
  2. Strain into chilled glass
  3. Garnish with cherry

Tips for Making a Manhattan

  • Shake with cracked ice to get a better mix; crack the ice cube in the palm of your hand with the back of a bar spoon
  • A maraschino cherry is best, though a lemon twist can be used instead of the cherry for a dressed-down version

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‍Mojito

Mojitos may seem like a newer, trendy drink, but their history reaches back many centuries. Native Cubans used mint leaves, sugar cane juice, and lime for medicine. The European presence in the Caribbean around that time encountered it and it soon evolved into a recreational drink with the addition of rum. The combination of cool mint leaves in mojitos complements the punch of citrus exquisitely. Making a mojito isn’t difficult, but making an excellent one is, so practice! There are worse fates in the world than disposing of practice mojitos.

Mojito Ingredients

  • 1.5 oz. rum
  • 1 oz. lime juice
  • 2 teaspoons sugar
  • 6 mint leaves
  • Club soda

How to Make a Mojito

  1. Muddle 4 mint leaves with sugar and lime juice
  2. Fill glass half full with crushed ice, add rum, and stir
  3. Top off with club soda
  4. Garnish with leftover 2 mint leaves and optional lime wheel or wedge

Tips for Making a Mojito

  • Slap the mint leaves with your hands before putting them in the glass to muddle; it releases the mint leaves’ essential oil
  • Stir gently to avoid mint leaves ripping
  • Use dark rum to create a deeper flavor profile

A Solid Bartender Recipes and Bartender Drinks List

These are the most popular cocktail recipes bartenders should know. They teach them in bartending school, no doubt. They are, in fact, must-know drinks for bartenders—or those learning how to become a bartender. Whether at a sports bar or a cocktail bar, bartenders cannot escape these drinks. And for good reason. They’re all delicious, popular, and worth knowing. That’s why we put them in this bartender drink guide. If you offer them in your bar, you'll go through liquor so quickly you'll never find out if liquor can go bad. You can also check out some of the best bartending books for more inspiration.

Discount them as one of your happy hour ideas, or tweak them with signature recipes for a bar promotion idea. Learn them, know them, mix them in your dreams. Then grab a copy of our bartender duties checklist to master the other bartender duties.

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Fall is when the world takes away its botanical treasures! And as plant life packs it in, our cocktails adapt. We don’t have an abundance of fresh herbs like spring cocktails have. We don't urgently need the refreshment of bright fruits like summer cocktails provide. And we don’t yet need the warmth and spice that winter cocktails offer.

Then what do we look for in a fall cocktail recipes? We thread the line between summer and winter. We still want fruit, but not overpowering fruit. And we want spice, but not overpowering spice. We want to experience a sort of comfortable, earthy moderation. Subtle, herbaceous spices conjure up feelings of a forest not in bloom and not yet frozen. Berries and non-citrus fruit remind us that not all fruit needs to grow in a furnace. This is the middle path we walk with our fall cocktail recipes, and it goes over the bridge from summer to winter. There's even a lack of club soda for this season's drinks.

Even if people aren’t sure they’re looking for all this, they are. It’s hard for a drink that reflects the feeling of fall not to resonate with someone as they experience fall. There’s a built-in market for this type of mixological seasonality.

But choosing specific fall cocktails will boost your bar profit margin. Choosing easy fall cocktails will lower pour cost (which you can verify using our liquor cost calculator guide). Because you’ll have all the ingredients, and all the ingredients are simple. These are also the best fall cocktails because they’re easy for bartenders to make. If they’re sticking to standard liquor pours and you’re calculating variance, you’ll have all your checks in place. Then you’ll no longer wonder “are bars profitable?” because you’ll know.

Here, then, are our 10 profitable fall cocktail recipes. Put them on your drink menu (tip: embrace menu engineering principles to make darn sure you get eyeballs on them) and watch them go.

Fall Vodka Cocktails

Bloody Mary

Tomatoes! Fruits, but not citrus fruits. Perfect for fall cocktails. They’re from the nightshade family, with siblings like eggplants, potatoes, and bell peppers. The Bloody Mary needs no introduction, but we wrote one anyway because we’re reckless.

1921, 1930, 1934, and 1942. All years that someone claims birthed the Bloody Mary. Like many cool things, the Bloody Mary’s origin story is contentious. So we won’t get too far into it. Let’s settle on the Bloody Mary coming to us from the early 20th century. That’s good enough for us.

It started as vodka and tomato juice and layers of flavors added over the years. The recipe is not a one-time idea, but a literal decades-long evolution into what it is today. All based on the tastes of the time and the cocktail market. If ever a drink was an organic creation of a society, it seems the Bloody Mary was.

Adobe illustrator free download mac 2020. The origin of the name, like the drink’s origins, are murky. Queen Mary I of England, Hollywood star Mary Pickford, the girlfriend of the owner of a bar called Bucket of Blood. All potential origins for the name. Again, impossible to know. So let’s just appreciate it for what it is: a cool name.

The Blood Mary is a concept at this point. Like a sandwich or a taco. There isn’t a single standardized recipe, but some general rules to follow when making one. But whatever recipe you end up with, you’ll have a classic fall cocktail on your hands. The Bloody Mary recipe here is very simple, yet very delicious. And that makes it profitable.

Bloody Mary Ingredients

  • 2 ounces vodka
  • 6 ounces tomato juice
  • 1 tablespoon ground horseradish
  • 2 dashes hot sauce
  • 2 dashes Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 pinch celery salt
  • 1 pinch ground black pepper
  • Lemon slice
  • Celery stalk
  • 2 speared green olives

Bloody Mary Recipe

  1. Coat a highball rim’s glass with celery salt, then fill the glass with ice
  2. Squeeze the lemon slice into a shaker and add vodka and everything else but the celery and olives and shake
  3. Strain into the highball glass
  4. Garnish with both the celery stalk and green olive spear

White Russian

The White Russian is a Black Russian with cream added. They have nothing to do with Russia besides their use of vodka. And vodka was created in Poland. Just one of those things, I guess.

A Belgian named Gustave Tops invented the cocktail in 1949 in honor of the U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg’s visit to Brussels.

We’ve now mentioned four countries in the last few sentences. You can be forgiven if you think the origin story of the White Russian doesn’t follow much logic. Because it doesn’t seem to.

What is clear is that it’s one of the most popular cream-based cocktails out there. And it’s the perfect fall cocktail addition to your seasonal drink menu. The vodka and coffee liqueur give the cocktail a vitality. But that vitality rests its tired head on cream’s lap, the drink’s calming presence. It’s a combination of characteristics that make it too energetic for winter and too relaxing for summer. That’s the perfect fall cocktail.

White Russian Ingredients

  • .75 ounces coffee liqueur
  • 1.75 ounces vodka
  • 1 ounce cream

White Russian Recipe

  1. Add ice to a rocks or old-fashioned glass
  2. Add coffee liqueur, then vodka
  3. Top off with cream
  4. Tell them “The Dude” sent you.

Fall Whiskey Cocktails

Manhattan

Easy Bartender Drinks

There is a group of people on earth obsessed with the Manhattan cocktail. It’s not whiskey-loving 30-somethings or fancy lounge-goers. It’s a bunch of people on a little German island in the North Sea.

Back in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Frisian island of Fohr was known for its whaling community. It’s not far from mainland Germany, but has access to the whaling bounty of the North Sea. The pursuit of whales took these folks all the way to America—New England to be precise. That's where much of the whaling industry had consolidated.

At the tail end of the whaling era, mixing rye whiskey, sweet vermouth, and bitters became popular in New York City. And it spread to the rest of the region—Hartford, Connecticut, specifically. The whalers from Fohr picked up the habit there. Heading back to their homeland because work dried up, they brought the recipe and their appetite for it with them.

To this day, the little island of less than 9,000 people is in love with it. They drink it for lunch, for dinner, as a nightcap, for special occasions. Pictures of it adorn restaurants and menus. Bartenders specialize in it. And people seek it out constantly.

The reason is easy to understand. In the crisp climbs of the North Sea, drinking a Manhattan is a lot like wrapping yourself in a blanket and sitting in a rocking chair. And what could be better on an overcast fall evening?

Manhattan Ingredients

  • 2 ounces rye, bourbon, or Canadian whiskey
  • .75 ounces sweet vermouth
  • 1 dash Angostura bitters
  • Cherry

Manhattan Recipe

  1. Pour everything except the cherry into a shaker with ice cubes and stir
  2. Strain into a chilled glass, cocktail, rocks, or martini (see martini lingo)
  3. Garnish with cherry

Old Fashioned

It’s often thought the past was a simpler place. True to its name, the old fashioned is one of the simplest drinks out there. It’s the addition of bourbon (and less often brandy) to sugar that’s muddled with bitters (see: what are bitters?)

Sweetening the drink with sugar keeps the flavor profile of the old fashioned quiet. You taste the bourbon and sugar against a sharp and subtle backdrop of dark botanicals. It’s a stiff, warming drink meant for a slow sipper. It’s the best fall cocktail because it’s basically fall in a glass.

What’s most interesting about the old fashioned is that it’s the original cocktail. There was a time when there weren’t thousands of cocktails. There was just one cocktail. And it was defined in 1806 as “a potent concoction of spirits, bitters, water, and sugar.” If you had spirits, bitters, water, and sugar, you had the one cocktail available. Given that whiskey and brandy were the most popular spirits in the 19th century, that’s what cocktails were made with. That means that every cocktail in 1806 was essentially an old fashioned. Make it with bourbon, brandy, or rye, it doesn’t matter. All it needs was bitters, water, and sugar and you’re good to go. It’s simplicity is one of the reasons it remains one of the most popular cocktails.

Of course, it wasn’t called an old fashioned back then. Just a cocktail. The original cocktail. It was only after the invention of hundreds of new cocktails that the drinking community looked back at the original recipe with nostalgia. “Give me a cocktail,” they’d say. “What kind?” the barkeep would ask. “One of those old fashioned ones.”

Old Fashioned Ingredients

  • 1.5 ounces bourbon whiskey
  • 1 sugar cube
  • 2 dashes of bitters (Angostura if available)
  • 1 teaspoon water
  • Orange slice or cherry

Old Fashioned Recipe

  1. Put sugar cube in an old fashioned glass and douse in bitters
  2. Add the teaspoon of water and muddle until the sugar cube dissolves
  3. Fill the glass with ice and add whiskey
  4. Garnish with orange slice or cherry

Fall Gin Cocktails

Corpse Reviver No. 2

The Savoy Hotel in London during the 19th and early 20th century was a place for movers and shakers. And, quite literally, shakers. There were lots of cocktails invented and popularized on the grounds of the Savoy. The Savoy Cocktail Book is proof. And the Corpse Reviver is one of them.

It sounds like a kitschy modern name for a craft cocktail. But the use of the phrase “corpse reviver” for mixed drinks dates to 1871. Historical people were cheeky, too!

There are two Corpse Revivers included in the The Savoy Cocktail Book. The first is with Cognac and tends to be the least popular of the two. The second, made with gin, is probably the most complicated cocktail on this list. It’s not as easy as the other fall cocktails, but it’s still relatively easy. The reason we still think it’s profitable is that it’s undeniably unique—both in name, recipe, and experience.

The combination of gin, citrus, wine, orange liqueur, and absinthe is quite unlike anything you’ve ever tasted before. And the name “Corpse Reviver No. 2” equally wedges itself in the memory. While you’ll likely have to shell out for some absinthe and possibly some aperitif wine, it’ll be worth it. On hungover fall mornings, the cool and lively flavor of the Corpse Reviver No. 2’s gin and fresh lemon—coupled with the sweet and bitter orange—make it simultaneously relaxing and energizing. The same kind of middle ground that fall occupies.

Corpse Reviver No. 2 Ingredients

  • 1 ounce gin
  • 1 ounce Cointreau
  • 1 ounce Lillet Blanc
  • 1 ounce lemon juice
  • 1 dash of absinthe
  • Orange peel

Corpse Reviver No. 2 Recipe

  1. Place all ingredients except orange peel in a cocktail shaker filled with ice and shake
  2. Strain into a martini glass
  3. Garnish with an orange peel

Negroni

James Bond, in the stories and movies, has at least twice ordered an Americano cocktail. It’s Campari, sweet vermouth, and sparkling water. And Bond prefers Perrier in his Americanos, thank you very much.

Sounds like a pretty refreshing drink, the Americano. Imagine coming home from a hard day’s work and sipping on one. Pretty good. Now imagine coming home from a really hard day’s work and sipping on one. Could probably be a little stronger. That’s what Pascal-Olivier de Negroni thought when he was enjoying his favorite cocktail after a hard day’s work as a general in the French military. When you spend your days worrying about all sorts of men-at-arms, armored cavalry, and the looming Prussian threat, you need a little something more than Campari to take the edge of. He asked a bartender to throw a shot of gin in his Americano, and the Negroni was born.

This guy took James Bond’s future drink and spiked it with gin. It’s epic. The Negroni is now considered one of the most classic cocktails ever invented. The Campari and sweet vermouth give the drink a deep ruby color. And the taste is herbal and bittersweet with lingering dark orange from the aroma of the garnish. It’s a calming, meditative drink, perfect for reflecting on the changing of the seasons.

Negroni Ingredients

  • 1 ounce gin
  • 1 ounce Campari
  • 1 ounce sweet vermouth (AKA vermouth rosso)
  • Orange peel

Negroni Recipe

  1. Add all ingredients except orange peel into a shaker with ice cubes, stir
  2. Strain into a rocks glass full of ice
  3. Garnish with an orange pee
Easy

Fall Rum Cocktails

Cranberry Maple Rum Cocktail

This is the only winter cocktail recipe with maple syrup on the list. That alone catapults it right to the top. Here the oakiness of bourbon mingles with the earthy sweetness of maple syrup. The key here is to use real maple syrup. Not necessarily because it’s better, but because it’s not as thick as the flavored corn syrup often bought in stores. That makes it easier to dissolve when shaken.

What makes syrup so perfectly suited to being in a cocktail is its consistency and chemical makeup. Maple syrup consists primarily of xylem, a transport tissue within plants that carries water and nutrients from stems to leaves. That gives xylem, and maple syrup, the consistency we all know and love.

But that consistency breaks down when combined with different types of alcohol. All the compounds responsible for the taste and aroma of maple syrup (many of which science still considers a mystery, strangely) are released into the drink. The xylem then goes on to slightly increase the thickness of the drink itself. But it’s only noticeable as the flavors linger on the back of your tongue.

What this amounts to is strategically unlocking the bounty of the great northern forests in our drink. Then we couple that with the tart, fresh taste of the cranberries, or “bog rubies” as they’re sometimes known. The result is a drink that harnesses geography and delivers to you, energetically, the original tastes of planet earth. That is a fall cocktail.

Cranberry Maple Rum Cocktail Ingredients

  • 1 ½ ounces rum
  • 1 tablespoon real maple syrup
  • ½ ounce Grand Marnier
  • 4 ounces pure cranberry juice
  • Orange twist

Cranberry Maple Rum Cocktail Recipe

  • Shake ice, rum, maple syrup, Grand Marnier, and cranberry juice in a cocktail shaker
  • Pour over ice and serve in a rocks glass, garnished with an orange twist

Dark ‘N Stormy

The story of the Dark ‘N Stormy is inspirational. In the early 19th century, James Gosling of England, left his home of Kent to sail to the U.S. Having been raised by a wine and spirit merchant, James was no stranger to running a business. He had 10,000 pounds sterling worth of merchandise, which, adjusted for inflation, is over one million dollars today.

But money couldn’t get him the life he wanted. After less than 100 days at sea, their ship’s charter expired. They could no longer sail legally. They had to put into port at the nearest spot, Bermuda. With his dreams dashed and future plans ruined, James re-evaluated his situation. And here’s the inspirational part: he did what he could with what he had. When life gave him Bermuda, he made rum.

In 1806, he started Gosling Brothers Limited as a rum blender and distributor. And in 1860, Gosling Brothers produced their first rum. It was called Old Rum. And it was originally sold out of barrels only. If you wanted some, you had to come in with an empty bottle and use the barrel tap. Soon they began selling the rum in repurposed Champagne bottles from nearby British military officers’ quarters and sealing the bottles with black wax. The rum came to unofficially, and now officially, be known as Black Seal Rum.

Legend has it that during and after WWI, British soldiers stationed in Bermuda grew fond of pouring some Black Seal rum into their ginger beers. And it wasn’t until the early 1990s that Gosling Brothers began marketing this drink using the name Dark ‘N Stormy. While the drink was created and marketed to the sailors and maritime enthusiasts in and around the Caribbean, it has a remarkably subtle profile for the tropics.

The ginger beer meshes well with the crisp fall weather, and the rum can be festive on the sunnier fall days and warming on the cooler ones. It’s not usually included on lists of drinks every bartender should know, but it’s worth remembering. Make this easy fall cocktail your go-to when the clouds roll in and the winds pick up and you’ll know why.

Dark ‘N Stormy Ingredients

  • 4 ounces ginger beer
  • 2 ounces dark rum
  • Lime wedge

Dark ‘N Stormy Recipe

  1. Pour rum in a highball glass 3/4ths full of ice
  2. Add ginger beer
  3. Garnish with a lime wedge

Fall Tequila Cocktails

Tequila Sour

As we covered when introducing the whiskey sour, the sours family of drinks is not a collection of recipes. It’s a general mixological approach to creating a cocktail. In the 1862 book The Bartenders Guide: How to Mix Drinks, author and bartender Jerry Thomas lay out what a sour is and the six basic sours.

A sour cocktail contains a base liquor, a sweetener, and lemon or lime juice. Some very traditional recipes include egg whites, but people don’t expect egg in their sours anymore. Jerry goes on to list the six main sours: whiskey sour, brandy sour, gin sour, rum sour, applejack sour, and the egg sour. The egg sour is a brandy sour with egg. Missing? The tequila sour.

The tequila sour didn’t come into its own because there already was a version of the tequila sour out there. The margarita. But not every time you go out you need to be dressed to the nines. And not every time tequila and sour are used in a cocktail does it need to be presented as a margarita. Tequila, like us, needs to relax sometimes. And it does that without salt, without the flair of orange liqueur, and without the cocktail or margarita glass. It has the same energy as a margarita, but it’s a subdued energy.

It may seem like a warm-weather cocktail, but that’s the margarita’s domain. It’s got the same energy as a margarita, but it’s a subdued energy. It’s not for partying, it's not one of those fancy aphrodisiac drinks. It’s for relaxing and savoring. It’s a way to let the intense flavors of summer age into toned-down versions of themselves. Fall, like summer, can be colorful, but it’s not aggressive. And that’s exactly what this very easy fall cocktail is.

Tequila Sour Ingredients

  • 1.5 ounces tequila
  • .75 ounces lemon juice
  • .75 ounces simple syrup
  • Cherry

Tequila Sour Recipe

  1. Add all ingredients to a shaker filled with ice and shake
  2. Strain into rocks or old fashioned glass with ice
  3. Garnish with a cherry

Long Island Iced Tea

Rosebud. That name lingers on as part of a great legacy.

Not only because of the last scene of Citizen Kane. But because of something—someone—even more legendary: Robert “Rosebud” Butt.

Rosebud claims to have invented the Long Island Iced Tea in 1972 as his entry to a cocktail mixing context on Long Island. The requirement was using triple sec in a cocktail.

Alternatively, the drink has a secondary claim of creation. And this involves an even better name that Rosebud Butt. Someone known only as Old Man Bishop during prohibition is rumored to have created the drink in Tennessee. In an area of Tennessee called Long Island. The drink was then tweaked by his son Ransom Bishop and set on its path to modernization.

Back then, the quantities of the five liquors in the Long Island Iced Tea varied. Today, it’s equal amounts of all of them. And if a bartender has a good free pour count, they can hold all those bottles at once. It’s quite a scene.

Easy Bartender Drinks Near Me

Two questions you may have: Is the Long Island Iced Tea a tequila cocktail? And is it a fall cocktail? Yes and yes. Let us explain.

First, it’s got tequila in it. Sure, it’s also got everything else in it. A Long Island Iced Tea can be anything you want it to be. And we like to think of it as a tequila cocktail because the roasted agave notes of tequila are immediately apparent in any Long Island Iced Tea. Tequila, for our money, has the most unique flavor profile of the primary base liquors. When you sip a Long Island Iced Tea, you know it’s got tequila in it.

And second, it’s an easy fall cocktail because it’s a dark, stiff, refreshing highball. It’s a busy, loud drink, but not like some of the summer cocktails with as many ingredients. The Coca-Cola tempers the noise and the flavors themselves aren’t bright or aggressive. It’s a combination of everything you know in a way that’s not obnoxious (sorry, summer) and not overly comfy (looking at you, winter). It’s the perfect combination of edge and composure that makes it a fitting fall cocktail. A profitable and easy fall cocktail, to boot.

Long Island Iced Tea Ingredients

Easy Bartender Drinks List

  • .5 ounces vodka
  • .5 ounces gin
  • .5 ounces rum
  • .5 ounces tequila
  • .5 ounces Cointreau
  • .75 ounces lemon juice
  • .5 ounces simple syrup
  • 1 ounce cola
  • Lemon twist

Long Island Iced Tea Recipe

  1. Add all ingredients except coke into a shaker filled with ice, shake
  2. Strain into a highball glass with ice
  3. Top with cola
  4. Garnish with a lemon twist

Easy Breezy Beautiful Fall Cocktails

These easy fall cocktails will split the difference between summer and winter in a memorable way. By using simple ingredients from your bar liquor inventory list (most of which you already have) and focusing on popular liquors, you’ll thread the seasonal needle. Not as powerful as summer, not as cozy as winter. That’s fall, a time of reflection. Just make sure to use good recipe costing so you make the most off of these drinks.

You can also check out some of the best bartending books for more inspiration.

Another thing you can reflect on is how these easy fall cocktail recipes have low pour costs and high profit margins. That's because they use only the most popular cocktail ingredients. Use our variance equation, improve inventory control, and master how to upsell cocktails, and you’ll be golden.