Want to make good cocktails at home? What you need to get started
Rachel Duggins got interested in cocktails early, from watching old movies in which the glamorous witty women and debonair men always seemed to have a drink in hand. When she was little, her family visited the iconic Pera Palace Hotel in Istanbul; Duggins was transfixed by the beautiful bar there. She asked her mother if she could get a drink, and her mother agreed, with rules on what she could order. So Duggins climbed up and politely asked for a Shirley Temple, with extra cherries.
She was 5. And those early stars in her eyes never went away.
Everyone starts somewhere different, with different goals. Maybe you want to be a good host, ready for any drink request. Or maybe there’s just a particular cocktail that you wouldn’t mind having at home from time to time.
We can help. Starting up doesn’t have to be overwhelming. You don’t have to become a temple of mixology, creating your own syrups, infusing your own bitters, sending out drinks that would fit in on a Paris runway. You don’t need a graduate degree in potions or enough money to afford a booze collection that requires its own wing. Just take it step by step.
That’s how Paul Clarke, author of “The Cocktail Chronicles” and executive editor of Imbibe magazine, did it when he first got into cocktails around 2003, via a dinner party where everyone was laying claim to making a dish. Clarke figured he could either make a cocktail or wash dishes. He found a punch recipe, and everyone at the party liked it. It felt great, he says, joking that “the heavens opened and the Jesus light came down.”
With a birthday coming up, he allowed himself a present: William Grimes’ classic cocktail book “Straight Up or On the Rocks” and bottles of rye whiskey and