The Drinks Guide: A World Tour in a Glass

Every great meal has a drink beside it. Table & Traditions goes deep on the food of India and the wider world — but the glass deserves the same care as the plate. This is our guide to everything you pour: the cocktails the whole world is judged by, the drinks that define a place, the alcohol-free options worth as much thought as any cocktail, and the unique coolers each region invented to suit its own heat and ritual.

A note before we begin: some of these drinks contain alcohol and some don’t. The cocktails are for adults of legal drinking age and carry a 21+ badge; their pages ask you to confirm your age, and every alcoholic recipe carries a responsibility note. About half the collection is completely alcohol-free, and many cocktails include a non-alcoholic version. Wherever you sit, there’s a glass here for you.

World-class cocktails, built properly

The cocktail canon endures because it’s balanced. An Old Fashioned is nothing but whiskey, sugar, water and bitters — and it’s still the truest test of a bar, because there’s nowhere to hide. So is the Dry Martini, the original spirit-forward drink and the template for everything stirred and strong. The Negroni is the easiest world-class drink to remember (equal parts gin, Campari and sweet vermouth) and one of the hardest to improve on — swap the gin for whiskey and you have its brooding cousin, the Boulevardier. The Margarita and Daiquiri are both sours — spirit, citrus, sweetener — that live or die on fresh lime, and the same logic runs through the Gimlet, Tom Collins and Sidecar. We give you the proper specs: measured pours, fresh juice, the right ice, and stir-don’t-shake where it matters. Once those are second nature, the Espresso Martini, Aperol Spritz, Pisco Sour, Caipirinha, Sazerac, Aviation and Singapore Sling round out a collection that can carry any occasion.

Not every great drink is a quiet sipper. The Long Island Iced Tea — five spirits faked into the colour of iced tea — is built for a party, and its tribe runs deep: the cranberry Long Beach, the neon-green Tokyo Tea, the electric-blue Electric Iced Tea, the bourbon-boosted Texas Tea and the tropical Hawaiian. Brunch has its own canon — the sparkling Mimosa and Bellini, and the savoury, endlessly customisable Bloody Mary. And tiki is a world unto itself: the rum-stacked Zombie that kicked off the craze, and the creamy, nutmeg-dusted Painkiller. For dessert in a glass, there’s the White Russian. Longer, fizzier highballs round it out — the Cuba Libre, Paloma, Dark ‘n’ Stormy and Tequila Sunrise — for when you want something tall and easy.

Drinks rooted in a place

Some drinks are inseparable from where they come from. Spain’s sangria is the communal pitcher of a long lunch; the American South’s mint julep is a frosted silver cup on a hot porch and the official drink of the Kentucky Derby; Irish coffee was invented to warm cold transatlantic travellers. And the world’s great non-alcoholic rituals belong here too: Moroccan mint tea poured from a height as an act of hospitality, Turkish coffee simmered in a cezve and read for fortunes, Vietnamese iced coffee dripped slowly over sweetened condensed milk. Each one tells you something about the place it’s from.

Non-alcoholic, with no compromise

An alcohol-free drink should be as considered as anything on the cocktail list. Mexico’s agua de jamaica is a bracingly tart hibiscus cooler, and its horchata a creamy, dairy-free rice-and-cinnamon classic. Thailand’s iced tea is sweet, strong and unmistakably orange. A proper virgin mojito — real muddled mint, not flavoured fizz — holds its own against the original. And falooda blurs the line between drink and dessert entirely, with rose syrup, basil seeds, vermicelli and ice cream layered in a tall glass.

The drinks a region made its own

Finally, the coolers that a single place customized to its climate and calendar. India’s repertoire alone is a season in a glass: the festival milk of thandai at Holi; the sweet-salty-tangy nimbu pani that revives you on a scorching afternoon; the jade-green aam panna made from sour summer mangoes as a heat-stroke remedy; and the fizzing, street-stall masala soda that cuts through anything fried or spicy. Alongside the everyday icons of masala chai and mango lassi, they show how a drink can be as local and specific as a regional dish.

Wherever you start, the principle is the same as everything else on this site: good ingredients, the technique that matters, and the reason behind every step. Pour something, and pull up a chair.