cocktail variation

, one of the main ways new mixed drinks get introduced, can refer to anything from adaptation of accepted proportions in a known recipe, to the use of alternate brands or subcategories of a spirit, to wholesale substitution or omission of an ingredient on a categorical level. Variation can be premeditated, based on a mixological understanding of how the ingredients can be altered without changing the fundamental identity of the recipe, or it can result from necessity (the lemons didn’t come that day) or error, resulting in a variety of outcomes ranging from an unhappy patron to a new recipe or accepted variation upon the original. Before addressing variation, it’s important to note that it’s common for a cocktail to be “created” simultaneously by bartenders unaware of the existence of a similar recipe elsewhere and for these parallel recipes to circulate under different names. Usually one variation is eventually accepted as canonical, based on factors ranging from the superiority of its recipe to a catchier name. The inclusion of a recipe in an important book or exposure from a marketing campaign are common tipping points for this process, which can take years. See Margarita.

Many bars and bartenders pride themselves on deliberate and idiosyncratic variations on a particular classic, which often involve adding an additional ingredient to an accepted recipe, such as the curaçao in the Manhattan made at the New York bar Employees Only (which was actually included in the original 1884 recipe), or the bourbon added to an Amaretto Sour at Pepe Le Moko in Portland, Oregon. See Amaretto Sour, Employees Only. In such instances, admiration for the bartenders who popularized the variations can lead others to offer it at their bars, or even to substitute it for the house version without mentioning it’s a twist on a more widely accepted recipe. Over time, a new standard can thus be established. See Daisy.

Another common point of differentiation between bars and bartenders is achieved through manipulating the proportions of a classic recipe: either incrementally in quarter- to half-ounce measures, creating a stronger, sweeter, more sour or bitter version of a cocktail, or by more drastic measures involving inverting proportions or serving them in equal parts. Two-ingredient cocktails such as the Rusty Nail and Stinger are excellent examples of recipes that can be served sweet, in place of dessert at equal parts, or strong, as potent digestives when the liqueur is deployed sparingly, while still retaining the recipe’s original identity.

Sometimes a bar will consciously replace one of the components in a known cocktail with an ingredient of a different type and ignore the mixological rule of thumb that holds that if you change a major ingredient, you must also change the name of the drink. One example of this is Julio Bermejo’s Tommy’s Margarita, which uses agave nectar in place of the traditional Cointreau or triple sec and yet is still called a Margarita. While that variation violates custom, the bartending community has accepted Bermejo’s logic that an agave-based sweetener belongs in an agave-based cocktail, and his version of the Margarita, with or without the Tommy’s moniker, is served in place of the classic recipe in bars all over the world.

This kind of ingredient switching is known among bartenders as the “Mr. Potato Head” method of creating new recipes, after the popular toy, which gives one a selection of facial features that may be substituted for one another. Take the brandy out of a Sidecar and add pineapple rum and it is a new drink. Then you can change it further by replacing the Cointreau with mandarin orange liqueur and the lemon juice with calamansi juice, and so on ad infinitum.

Lastly, there are multiple mixing methods including shaking, stirring, blending, throwing, rolling, or building a cocktail, any alteration in which can greatly change the quality and character of a cocktail. The difference between a blended and a hand-shaken Daiquiri is dramatic to the point of making them two different drinks.

See also cocktail recipes, cocktail proportions.

Kaplan, David, et al. Death & Co. New York: Ten Speed, 2014.

By: Jim Meehan