World Spirits

An informational guide to the world's most iconic spirits and cocktails, with their stories, what goes in them, and how they are made and served.

World Spirits is an informational guide to iconic alcoholic drinks from around the world. Drinks are not for sale here. For each drink, describe its origin and history, what goes in it, how it is made and served, and what makes it the world's best experience of its kind. Do not invent prices or purchase links.

• Coquito

  Puerto Rico's beloved Christmas drink: a silky coconut-rum nog that families blend by the bottle and gift to everyone they love. Ingredients: coconut milk, cream of coconut, evaporated milk, sweetened
• Piña Colada

  The official national drink of Puerto Rico since 1978, and the taste of the Caribbean in a glass: rum, pineapple and coconut blended into a frosty, tropical swirl. Ingredients: Puerto Rican white rum,
• Pitorro

  Puerto Rico's legendary moonshine: a fiery sugarcane spirit, distilled in the hills and shared in small, serious shots — especially at Christmas. Ingredients: sugarcane (fermented cane juice or molass
• Tequila

  Mexico's gift to the world: the blue agave spirit of Jalisco, bright, peppery and unmistakably of its red volcanic earth. Ingredients: 100% blue Weber agave at its best — the piña hearts are slow-cook
• Mezcal

  Tequila's smoky elder: mezcal is agave spirit made the slow, ancestral way, and you taste the fire in every sip. Ingredients: mature agave hearts — espadín and wilder species like tobalá — volcanic ro
• Pulque

  The ancient, milky drink of the Mexican highlands: lightly fizzy, gently sour, alive — pulque is fermented, never distilled, and older than the Aztec empire. Ingredients: aguamiel, the sweet sap of th
• Single Malt Scotch Whisky

  Scotland's masterpiece: whisky made from 100% malted barley at a single distillery, distilled in copper pot stills and aged in oak under Scottish skies. Ingredients: malted barley, water, yeast — noth
• Atholl Brose

  A storied Scottish honey-and-oat whisky cream: part drink, part dessert, and the hero of a 500-year-old legend. Ingredients: oatmeal brose (the liquid from steeped oats), heather honey, single malt Sc
• Rob Roy

  Scotland's answer to the Manhattan — a bold, russet cocktail of Scotch, vermouth and bitters, named for the Highlands' most famous outlaw-hero. Ingredients: blended or single malt Scotch whisky, sweet
• Irish Whiskey

  The smooth original: Irish whiskey is famous for triple distillation and an easy, honeyed charm that made it the world's best-selling whiskey a century ago — and it is roaring back. Ingredients: malte
• Irish Coffee

  A hug in a glass: hot coffee and Irish whiskey under a collar of cold cream, invented on a freezing night to warm stranded travelers. Ingredients: hot strong coffee, Irish whiskey, brown sugar, lightl
• Irish Stout

  Ireland's black gold: a dry stout of roasted barley and nitrogen bubbles, crowned with a dome of cream-white foam — Guinness is its global ambassador. Ingredients: water, malted barley, roasted unmalt
• Sake

  Japan's ancient rice brew — not a spirit but a fermented drink of polished rice, water, koji and yeast, as deep and varied as wine. Ingredients: sake rice polished to remove outer layers (the finest d
• Japanese Whisky

  Scotland's discipline, Japan's soul: Japanese whisky is famed for precision, purity and balance — and for winning the world's top whisky honors. Ingredients: malted barley and grains, pristine water,
• Shochu

  Japan's quiet giant: a distilled spirit of sweet potato, barley, rice or buckwheat, lighter than whisky and made to accompany food. Ingredients: a base ingredient — imo (sweet potato), mugi (barley),
• Cognac

  The world's most celebrated brandy, double-distilled from the wines of one small French town and aged in oak until it turns to amber silk. Ingredients: grapes — mainly Ugni Blanc — grown in the delimi
• Champagne

  The wine of celebration itself — true Champagne comes only from France's Champagne region, and its bubbles are born inside the bottle. Ingredients: Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier grapes from
• Armagnac

  France's oldest brandy — older than Cognac by a century or more — rustic, soulful and proudly unfashionable, from the rolling hills of Gascony. Ingredients: white grapes — Ugni Blanc, Baco, Folle Blan
• Mojito

  Havana in a tall glass: white rum, mint, lime and soda — the most refreshing cocktail Cuba ever gave the world. Ingredients: Cuban-style white rum, fresh mint leaves, lime, sugar (or sugar syrup), sod
• Cuba Libre

  Rum and cola with a battle cry: the Cuba Libre is a toast to freedom that became one of the world's most-ordered drinks. Ingredients: Cuban-style rum (white or gold), cola, fresh lime, ice. Method: 1)
• Daiquirí

  The purest test of a bartender: rum, lime and sugar, shaken into an icy, electric balance — Cuba's elegant contribution to cocktail perfection. Ingredients: white rum, fresh lime juice, fine sugar or
• Bourbon

  America's native spirit by act of Congress: a corn-rich whiskey aged in brand-new charred oak, tasting of vanilla, caramel and frontier sunshine. Ingredients: a mash of at least 51% corn (the rest rye
• Old Fashioned

  The original cocktail — quite literally: the first written definition of the word “cocktail” in 1806 describes exactly this drink. Ingredients: bourbon or rye whiskey, a sugar cube or rich syrup, Ango
• Mint Julep

  The taste of the Kentucky Derby: bourbon and mint over a mountain of crushed ice, sweating in a silver cup. Ingredients: Kentucky bourbon, fresh mint leaves, sugar or syrup, crushed ice — and, traditi
• Negroni

  Florence's crimson icon: equal parts gin, Campari and sweet vermouth — bitter, bold and effortlessly elegant, the king of the Italian aperitivo. Ingredients: gin, Campari, sweet red vermouth, an orang
• Amaro

  Italy's bitter poetry: a whole family of herbal liqueurs, each a secret garden of roots, bark, flowers and spice, sipped to close a meal. Ingredients: dozens of botanicals — gentian, wormwood, orange
• Grappa

  Italy's firewater, refined: grappa is distilled from the pomace — the skins, seeds and stems left after winemaking — turning the harvest's leftovers into liquid gold. Ingredients: fresh grape pomace f
• Pisco Sour

  Peru's national cocktail: a cloud of citrus foam over grape brandy, crowned with three drops of bitters — tart, silky and gloriously proud. Ingredients: Peruvian pisco, fresh lime juice (the small, fi
• Pisco

  The soul inside the sour: pisco is Peru's grape brandy, distilled to proof in the desert valleys of Ica and never touched by wood. Ingredients: wine grapes — aromatic Italia and Torontel, or the sturd
• Chilcano

  Lima's tall, sparkling refresher: pisco and ginger ale over ice — older in bar lore than the sour, and the drink Peruvians actually order all summer. Ingredients: Peruvian pisco, ginger ale, fresh lim
• Caipirinha

  Brazil's national cocktail: cachaça, lime and sugar muddled into a rough, radiant, ice-cold refresher — samba in a glass. Ingredients: cachaça, one whole lime cut into wedges, granulated sugar, ice cu
• Cachaça

  Brazil's cane spirit: distilled from fresh sugarcane juice — not molasses — which gives it a grassy, vibrant character all its own. Ingredients: freshly pressed sugarcane juice, water, yeast; aged sty
• Batida

  Brazil's blended beach party: cachaça whirred with fruit and condensed milk into a creamy, tropical shake for grown-ups. Ingredients: cachaça, fruit — coconut, passion fruit (maracujá), strawberry or