All About Cocktails

First is making sure your cocktail tantalizes your tastebuds. If you are playing around with new, off-the-cuff recipes, it helps to know the base ingredients that make up many of our favorite cocktails. A reliable way of trying out cocktails while giving yourself a good chance of concocting something tasty is to learn the following standard cocktail components:

• an alcohol portion - usually a spirit, such as gin, vodka, rum, or whiskey
• a citrus base - for example, lemon or lime juice
• a sweetener, such as syrup or granulated sugar.

These three core components are present in many of the world's best-known cocktails. For example, a Whiskey Sour combines bourbon, lemon juice, and granulated sugar, while a Mojito consists of white rum, lime juice, and sugar before being topped with soda water. The list is so long that developing something new might be tricky, but the fun is in the experimenting!

Once you're a whizz at building your cocktails, the next step to making them stand out is presentation. For this, there are a few key factors to consider:

• Use garnishes to your advantage. A little garnish can transform the look of a cocktail, turning it from a run-of-the-mill, plain-looking drink into an eye-catching, colorful beverage just begging to be sipped. Colors can even improve our mood and cognitive function, so it's hard to think of a good reason not to add suitable garnish to your cocktail.
  Like with glassware, always use appropriate garnish for your drink, as the wrong garnish can negatively impact its flavor. Most cocktail recipes will explicitly say the correct garnish to use, but if the one you're following doesn't, you can use the base ingredients in your drink as a guide for which garnish will work well with your cocktail. For example, if your cocktail uses lemon juice as its citrus base, using a slice of lemon as garnish is a safe option to go with.

• Use high-quality crystal glassware. Fine crystal glassware adds a touch of elegance to a cocktail, helping it to sparkle in the light. No matter how well you do everything else, a cocktail in a plastic cup will never look as good as one in a crystal glass. As well as the brilliance it adds, crystal glassware is more durable than regular glass, making it a wise choice if you're looking for glassware that can stay at its best for longer. The superior quality of crystal glass underlines why all Spiegelau Glassware is made from this material - to deliver elegant, functional, and durable glassware for any drinking occasion. 

• Use the appropriate glass. Some cocktails just look right in a specific style of glass. We love an Old Fashioned, but we may raise an eyebrow at one served in a Martini glass. So, whenever you serve up a drink, confirm which vessel is best for it. The Spiegelau Perfect Serve Collection was designed with award-winning bar expert Stephan Hinz to provide an expertly crafted and sized glassware series with suitable glassware for accommodating any cocktail. 

• Make sure your glass is properly cleaned and polished. Even the slightest smudge mark can ruin your drink's visual appeal. Ensuring you properly clean and polish your cocktail glass using a clean microfibre polishing cloth before using will give it that unspoiled, pristine sparkle that will dazzle guests.

Once you've nailed making expertly-crafted cocktails that look as good as they taste, you'll be all set up to well and truly show off to your guests once your turn to host rolls around again.