The Mint Julep is a bourbon cocktail best known for being the signature drink of the Kentucky Derby. But this easy-to-make refresher shouldn’t be reserved for only one day a year. This classic cocktail was created in the southern United States during the 18th century and is still a favorite today.

Spirit, sugar, citrus—the original big three—come together in the Whiskey Sour, whose history stretches back to the Lincoln administration. Few drinks in the cocktail canon are as quick to satisfy and endlessly mutable as the Whiskey Sour. Add a flourish to any component, and you have your own personal spin on the classic. We like our Whiskey Sour thickened with egg white and a few dashes of aromatic bitters for a complementary spice note.

WHISKEY SOUR VARIATIONS:

•Pisco Sour: substitute Pisco

•Ward 8:
1.5 oz Bourbon, ¾ lemon ¾ orange
1 tsp grenadine (pom. syrup)

The Blood & Sand is a classic scotch-based cocktail that has withstood the test of time. The recipe first appeared in 1930 in The Savoy Cocktail Book by Harry Craddock and has become a mainstay on bar menus ever since.

It gets its name from a 1922 bullfighter movie and points to its ingredients: The “blood” represents Heering cherry liqueur, and the “sand” is for the orange juice.

The key to the cocktail is to use a smooth scotch that’s not too smoky and freshly squeezed orange juice. So forget about your Islay scotches (for now), and avoid that carton of OJ in the fridge.

The Margarita is one of the most popular cocktails in North America—for good reason. Combining the tang of lime and the sweetness of orange liqueur with the distinctive strength of tequila, our classic Margarita strikes all of the right keys.

Although many people reach for premade sour mix, we highly recommend using fresh lime juice. The end result is—let’s face it—superior.

When talking Margaritas, it’s easy to get lost in stories about who invented the drink or get mired in debates over salt versus no salt; blended or frozen; triple sec, Cointreau or Grand-Marnier. In our opinion, this version is the tried-and-true recipe for the best Margarita you can make. Memorize it, and you’ll always impress.

The classic Daiquiri is a super simple rum cocktail that’s well-balanced and refreshing. The combination of sweet, sour and spirit is refreshingly tangy and perfect for any occasion.

The Daiquiri’s classic cocktail status was long established before the contemporary cocktail phase. It was one of six classic cocktails that was featured in David A. Embury’s 1948 seminal book on cocktails, “The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks.”

Once you’ve made this recipe, you’ll forget all about those terrible frozen, syrupy Daiquiris you’ve had in tropical locations. Add this foolproof drink to your bartending arsenal and your friends will thank you.

DAIQUIRI VARIATIONS:

La Floradita: add a dash of grenadine

Papa Doble: 2oz. Rum, ½ oz. maraschino, ½ lime, ½ oz. grapefruit

Old Cuban: 2oz. Aged Rum, ½ lime, ½ simple, 1 dash ango, mint, topped with champagne

The Mai Tai is the quintessential torch carrier of Tiki. It made its flowery foray into American culture between the 1930s and ’50s, thanks to tropical-minded entrepreneurs like Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt (a.k.a. Donn Beach) and Victor Jules Bergeron (a.k.a. Trader Vic). This classic recipe comes from Tiki historian Jeff “Beachbum” Berry, the owner of New Orleans’ ode to Tikidom, Latitude 29.

This recipe originally appeared as part of “How the Mai Tai Became the Calling Card for the Tiki Movement.”

MAI TAI VARIATIONS: Endless

The paloma is a tequila-based cocktail. This drink is most commonly prepared by mixing tequila with a grapefruit-flavored soda such as Fresca, Squirt, or Jarritos and served on the rocks with a lime wedge. Adding salt to the rim of the glass is also an option

Mojito is a traditional Cuban highball. Traditionally, a mojito is a cocktail that consists of five ingredients: white rum, sugar, lime juice, soda water, and mint. Its combination of sweetness, citrus, and herbaceous mint flavors is intended to complement the rum, and has made the mojito a popular summer drink

The martini is a cocktail made with gin and vermouth, and garnished with an olive or a lemon twist. Over the years, the martini has become one of the best-known mixed alcoholic beverages. H. L. Mencken called the martini "the only American invention as perfect as the sonnet" and E. B.

A few questions one must ask before making a martini:

•Vodka or gin?

•Olive or twist?

•Wet, dry, very dry, 50/50, dirty, Gibson

The most widely reported version of this drink’s origin is that it was invented at Caffe Casoni in Florence, Italy in 1919. Legend tells that Count Camillo Negroni asked his friend, bartender Forsco Scarselli, to strengthen his favourite cocktail – the Americano – by replacing the soda water with gin. Scarselli added an orange garnish, rather than the lemon you’d usually get with an Americano, and the drink took off. Before long, everyone was coming into the bar for a ‘Negroni.’

Most people know that a Tom Collins is a type of gin cocktail made with lemon juice, soda water, and sugar.

But you probably never knew that it's named after a really lame joke from 1874.

Here's how it went: A man would approach his friend and ask, "Have you seen Tom Collins?"

"Why no!" the second man would say. "I have never made his acquaintance."

"Perhaps you had better do so, and as quick as you can, for he is talking about you in a very rough manner — calling you hard names, and convincing people there is nothing you wouldn't steal short of a red-hot stove."

This would upset the second man, who would stomp off to go looking for this rascal Tom Collins, but — twist! — he didn't actually exist.

It's a pretty lame joke, but it went viral and became all the rage in New York and Philadelphia. It was so popular, in fact, that it was dubbed "The Great Tom Collins Hoax of 1874."

COLLINS VARIATIONS:

•Vodka Collins

•Tom Collins- Gin

•John Collins- Geneveror Whiskey

•Juan Collins - Tequila

•Ron Collins - Rum

The Gimlet was promoted and drunk by British officers back in the 19th Century. Citrus juice was a gift from the Gods to sailors, as it prevented them from catching scurvy – a brutal, painful and sometimes deadly disease brought about by vitamin C deficiency.

Rear-Admiral Sir Thomas Desmond Gimlette (served 1879 – 1913) is cited by some as the namesake of the Gimlet. Acting as a doctor to sailors, he administered gin with lime in order to mask the bitter taste. Allegedly, he introduced this to his shipmates to help them swallow down the lime juice as an anti-scurvy medication. British sailors, though – unlike their superior Naval officers – had rum rations, and so used to mix this in with their lime. The drink became known as ‘grog,’ and so great was their consumption of this ‘medicine’ that sailors soon became known as “Limeys”.

Another credible etymological story is that the concoction was named after the hand tool, which was used to bore into barrels of spirits on Navy ships – a gimlet.

Rose’s Lime Cordial has played a central role in the story of the Gimlet, as it was the accessible and necessary sweet fruit preserve of choice by sailors. The cordial was first produced by Scottish entrepreneur Lauchlan Rose in 1867 and was the world’s first fruit concentrate. Rose patented the process in a move that quickly paid off, as later that year a law was passed that all vessels should carry lime juice and serve it as a daily ration to their crews.

The cocktail was featured in harry Craddock’s 1930 The Savoy Cocktail Book, where he offered the advice that the drink “can be iced if desired.”

This descendent of the classic Daisy (spirit/flavored modifier/citrus) bears a similar resemblance to a cocktail printed in the 1934 book Pioneers of Mixing at Elite Bars1903-1933, which featured a drink made of gin, Cointreau, lemon juice, and raspberry syrup; almost exactly mirroring the flavor and color of the modern incarnation. But raspberry syrup is way more Samantha than Carrie (Sorry. That’s the only Sex in the City joke, just had to get it out of the way.) and it really started to take shape as the modern cocktail in the mid-'80s thanks to the introduction of Absolut Citron.

This citrus-flavored vodka was integral to the Cosmo as it differentiated it from its predecessors, like the Kamikaze or the Harpoon cocktail, made with Ocean Spray Cranberry, vodka, and a splash of lime, served on the rocks or in a Collins glass with soda (a recipe that was listed on the bottle of Ocean Spray in 1968).

Though this drink's origin is often-disputed, the most recognized creation of the Cosmo is credited to Toby Cecchini, of The Odeon in Manhattan in 1987. According to Kyle Ford, a rep for Cointreau, he was “introduced to the Cosmopolitan by co-worker Melissa Huffsmith. He put a fresh spin on the known South Beach and San Francisco versions [that used Rose's Lime Cordial].” His mix used Absolut Citron, Cointreau, cranberry juice, and fresh lime juice. And the modern day Cosmo was born.

But, of course, it wasn’t until the airing of Sex in the City that the Cosmopolitan really launched into pop culture icon status. In the late '90s and early aughts, it topped the lists of bars across the country and became synonymous with working women, the budding cocktail revolution, and men ordering cocktails in rocks glasses because they didn’t want to seem too girly.

The Last Word is a Prohibition-era cocktail that got its beginnings in the Detroit Athletic Club's bar in the early 1920s. The drink was served at the bar throughout this period and was spread further afield by vaudeville performer Frank Fogarty – also known as the 'Dublin Minstrel.'