Short shopping list
Three-ingredient cocktails
Every drink here needs three or fewer required ingredients — garnish doesn't count, and a good number of these are two.
A long ingredient list isn't automatically a better drink — plenty of the best-known cocktails in the world are built on two or three components in the right ratio, not a dozen. These are the recipes worth learning first: cheap to stock, fast to make, and forgiving if you're just getting your bar basics together.
The count below only includes ingredients the recipe actually needs — optional garnishes and finishing touches aren't counted against a drink, so a cocktail with an orange twist listed can still make this cut.
101 cocktails
Shirley Temple
Ginger ale and grenadine with a maraschino cherry — a bright, fizzy classic mocktail.
Espresso Tonic
Chilled tonic water over ice with a fresh double espresso poured on top — bittersweet, fizzy and cold.
Bacardí Cocktail
White rum, lime and grenadine, shaken cold — a Daiquiri with a pink, pomegranate-sweetened twist.
Tommy's Margarita
Tequila, lime and agave syrup — no triple sec — a cleaner, more agave-forward take on the Margarita.
Brandy Alexander
Cognac, dark crème de cacao and cream, shaken smooth — a dessert cocktail dusted with nutmeg.
French Connection
Cognac and amaretto, built over ice — a simple, warming two-ingredient sipper.
Death in the Afternoon
Absinthe topped with ice-cold Champagne — a stark two-ingredient drink credited to Ernest Hemingway.
Vietnamese Coffee Cocktail
Dark rum stirred into strong iced coffee and sweetened condensed milk — a spirited take on Vietnamese cà phê sữa đá.
Kombucha Mule
Ginger kombucha and lime over ice — a tangy, faintly funky alcohol-free take on the Moscow Mule format.
Sparkling Cranberry Mocktail
Tart cranberry juice lengthened with soda and lime — a bright, festive-looking three-ingredient mocktail.
Virgin Daiquiri
Lime and sugar blended with crushed ice to a frozen slush, finished with a splash of soda — the Daiquiri's citrus snap, without the rum.
Corpse Reviver No. 1
Cognac, apple brandy and sweet vermouth, stirred cold — the older, spirit-forward half of the Corpse Reviver family.
Roy Rogers
Cola and grenadine with a maraschino cherry — the cola-based sibling to a Shirley Temple.
Virgin Sunrise
Orange juice and grenadine, layered so the colour bleeds from red to gold — the Tequila Sunrise without the tequila.
Alcohol-Free Bellini
Peach purée topped with alcohol-free sparkling wine — two ingredients, and the same drink the original always was.
Virgin Sea Breeze
Cranberry and grapefruit over ice — the Sea Breeze's dry, tart half, which was always the interesting part.
Lime Rickey
Lime, a little sugar and soda water — three ingredients, and the driest long drink on the site.
Raspberry Shrub Soda
Raspberry shrub lengthened with soda — sweet, sharp and genuinely complex, with vinegar doing the work alcohol usually does.