The Kiki

I invented this one to commemorate the birth of our first child. It's very simple, but drinkers will have a hard time deciding what's in it. This is a good one for beginning cocktail makers, because it only requires 2 kinds of liquor, both of which will come in handy in other recipes. And minor variations in the proportions don't really matter.
  • 2 measures Finlandia cranberry vodka
  • 3/4 measure Cointreau
  • 3/4 measure lemon juice

Shake ingredients with plenty of ice and strain into a cocktail glass. If you find it too strong, increase the Cointreau and lemon juice. Alternatively, use a slightly larger glass, fill it with ice, pour in the shaken cocktail, and top with a little soda water.
  • 2 measures cranberry vodka
  • 1/2 measure Cointreau
  • 1/2 measure lime juice
  • 1/4 measure Chambord raspberry liqueur

Shake ingredients with plenty of ice and strain into a cocktail glass.
Crimson Night

Just change the lemon to lime, alter the proportions a little, and add a touch of Chambord, and you have a very different cocktail. The Chambord imparts a deep red color and a slightly syrupy sweetness, offset by the distinctive tang of lime.
White Lady

Gin is probably the first liquor that comes to mind when you think of cocktails, so here at last is a recipe that uses it. You already have lemons and Cointreau, so this is another one you can make without breaking the bank. Note also that the blend of ingredients and the shaking with ice tend to mask to an extent the individual liquors, which means you don't have to be too choosy when choosing a brand. I have used various kinds of gin in the past, but now tend to use Gilbey's, which is very inexpensive.

  • 2 measures gin
  • 1 measure Cointreau
  • 1 measure lemon juice

Shake ingredients with plenty of ice and strain into a cocktail glass. If you find it too strong, use a slightly larger glass, fill it with ice, pour in the shaken cocktail, and top with a little soda water.


  • 1 1/2 measures gin
  • 1/2 measure Cointreau
  • 1/2 measure lime juice
  • 2 dashes angostura bitters

Shake ingredients with plenty of ice and strain into a cocktail glass.
Pegu

The primary liquor is the backbone of a cocktail, giving it strength and body. The addition of a mildly sweet liqueur like Cointreau and the offsetting sourness of citrus turn the liquor into a cocktail. Simply varying the primary liquor and switching between lemon and lime give us quite a range, but for greater variety we need some kind of accent. Just as Cointreau is the perfect sweetener, and lemon or lime are the most versatile sour elements, so Angostura bitters is the accent par excellence. Made in Trinidad to a centuries-old recipe, it has hints of cinnamon sweetness and, its name notwithstanding, only a very slight bitterness. Just a few drops elevate this drink from White Lady impostor into one of the best cocktails ever invented.
Ginger & Lime

You're probably wondering whether every cocktail contains Cointreau. For this cocktail, we replace it with sweet ginger wine, something which is rather unusual outside the U.K. but that good liquor stores in Japan are happy to order for you.

  • 2 measures gin
  • 1 measure ginger wine
  • 1 measure lime juice

Shake ingredients with plenty of ice and strain into a cocktail glass.


You may have noticed that with all the recipes so far the amount of primary liquor is greater than or equal to the total of all other ingredients combined. This is one of the marks of a classic cocktail. I don't use this word in the restrictive sense of an actual recipe that has existed for decades - indeed the White Lady is the first drink featured here that I didn't invent - but in the sense of a drink of classic proportions, where you can taste all the ingedients and the various additions fail to obscure the primary liquor.

In the next section, we'll gradually start breaking away from the constraints of classic cocktails while always keeping them in the back of our mind as a theoretical ideal, to avoid generating an undisciplined mish-mash of ingredients.