Two of my favorite cocktails are, in most bars, made with pre-made mixers. These tepid liquids tend to range from tolerable to noxious in flavor. Generally concocted from small bits of fruit juice unhappily married to artificial flavors and corn syrup, they are not meant to make a great drink. They are meant to lend the shade of the flavor of a great drink to a product that can be mixed and served in seconds.

Believe me, if I were slinging 250 drinks per hour, I wouldn’t want to be futzing with all of this fruit and different spirits and additions ad infinitum either. I’d take the easy route, too.

At home, you don’t have to- and that’s a beautiful thing. Your whiskey sour can gleam! Your margarita can sparkle and delight. Deep flavors, clean finishes, twinkling presentations, all yours. The glass could be your oyster if you’d only take it and shout, “I am the master of my own tipple domain!”

Cheap things like halfway decent turbinado sugar, sea salt, middle-shelf liquor and fresh fruit (organic or not) are worlds beyond what you’ll ever find in a storebought mix, and better, by and large, than what you’ll encounter even at fancy places that stress fresh ingredients.

This purist way, of course, is how the cocktails in question were intended to be made- the pre-made mixers were an afterthought. According to the illustrious they, these drinks are supposed to be far simpler than you’d imagine when you’re staring down the list of 30 ingredients on that bottle of storebought Sweet-And-Sour! (no carageenan gum here, I swear)

Let’s get back to basics and make something worth drinking!
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Filed under: Cocktail Hour, Recipes
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