Cocktails

[wildeabandon]

We've been discussing the definition of a cocktail in terms of the number of ingredients it entails. I was once given a set of rules that I'm beginning to question, and want to see what the general consensus is.

Poll #1242 Cocktails should have at least this many:

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 25

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Total ingredients:

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Zero
0 (0.0%)

One
0 (0.0%)

Two
10 (40.0%)

Three
14 (56.0%)

Four
1 (4.0%)

More than four
0 (0.0%)

Alcoholic ingredients:

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Zero
3 (12.0%)

One
10 (40.0%)

Two
12 (48.0%)

Three
0 (0.0%)

Four
0 (0.0%)

More than fourt
0 (0.0%)

Non-alcoholic ingredients

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Zero
12 (48.0%)

One
9 (36.0%)

Two
4 (16.0%)

Three
0 (0.0%)

Four
0 (0.0%)

More than four
0 (0.0%)

Do lemon twists, olives, cocktail onions &c count as ingredients?

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Yes
5 (20.0%)

No
20 (80.0%)

Are there any drinks (particularly ones commonly accepted as cocktails) that you consider exceptions to your chose rules?

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Are there any drinks which fit your rules, but you don't think of as cocktails?

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Comments

[wildeabandon]

I think I'm actually coming to the conclusion that a drink should either have at least two alcoholic ingredients, or have at least three ingredients at least one of which is alcoholic to count, but that olives &c shouldn't count.

[hatter]

I'd go along with that, I was toying with numbers and exceptions for the poll but not managing to convince myself enough to vote one way or the other.


the hatter

[mjg59.livejournal.com]

What do you count as an ingredient? I'd always thought of a caipirinha as a cocktail, but given that it's booze, ice, sugar and lime it potentially falls foul of a variety of issues depending on what you consider to be an ingredient and what you consider to be a garnish...

[nyecamden]

But I want non-alcoholic cocktails!!!

Virgin pina colada to start :-)

[deliberateblank.livejournal.com]

I had a mind twinge that said this might be time related rather than ingredient related, but I think I was remembering reading this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBA_Official_Cocktail

I guess if they call it a cocktail, then it's probably a cocktail, so counting their min/max ingredients might help.

dw's age filtering is astonishingly unhelpful btw.

[entscheidung.livejournal.com]

Cocktails are traditionally composed of spirits, sugar, water, and bitters, so I go with four.

[(Anonymous)]

One thing I'm convinced of - no cocktail can contain lager or cider as its main ingredient, however convinced Bradford Rios was to the contrary!

[(Anonymous)]

PS from Jesslovelybug

[robert_jones]

I tend to agree (in fact, I think it may have been my suggestion, so that's perhaps not surprising). I think I'm happy to say that a screwdriver isn't a proper cocktail, and similarly the naked martini. I could accept that kir could go either way, but I think a pina colada certainly is, and similarly the various shooters made from mixing two spirits/liqueurs.

I think I'm prepared to accept something as an ingredient if its absence would make the thing into a different drink. So, for example, while it would be regretable to serve a G&T without a wedge of lime, it would still be a G&T, but you couldn't serve a vodka and tomato juice and call it a bloody Mary. So I accept that a cuba libre is a cocktail iff the absence of the lime would turn it into a rum and coke. On this basis that caipirinha is safe, because the omission of either the lime, sugar or ice would make it deficient. I'm reluctant to allow ice under any circumstances, but even so the caipirinha reaches three ingredients.

I think I also want to count bitters as non-alcoholic for this purpose (because the alcohol content seems to be merely incidental) and therefore disqualify the pink gin.

[robert_jones]

That list includes three (or four) drinks I'm not calling cocktails: the screwdriver, the bellini, the mimosa and the buck's fizz. OTOH, I'm not sure I trust anyone who thinks a mimosa is a different drink from a buck's fizz. All of those consist of one alcoholic and one non-alcoholic ingredient, a definition which is clearly much too broad for our (slightly silly) purpose of drawing a bright line between cocktails and non-cocktails.

[nanaya]

I can't really answer your poll because the alcoholic-ness of the ingredients affects my answer. In brief, my rule is this:

A cocktail is a mixed drink which MUST contain at least 3 ingredients, UNLESS it contains only two ingredients and BOTH of those are alcoholic (I am suspicious of this kind of cocktail, but am forced to concede its validity).

Any ingredient which goes *into* the drink, counts - so a lemon twist is an ingredient provided it touches the liquid. Arguably, therefore, a sugar or salt rim is not.

Thus, a rum & coke is not a cocktail but a mixed drink. A Cuba Libre *is* a cocktail because of the presence of the lime (I refute those who claim that simply using Bacardi & Coca-Cola makes it a Cuba Libre. This is not so).

I believe my rule is the commonly accepted standard, but I may well be wrong :-)

[nanaya]

Boilermakers? Black Velvets?

Why not lager or cider?

[nanaya]

Agreed. None of those two-ingredient mixed drinks are cocktails.

[nanaya]

You can have many non-alcoholic cocktails - provided they have 3 or more ingredients!

[sashajwolf]

I agree with this.

[deliberateblank.livejournal.com]

Ah, mimosa. I was trying to remember that word last week. (I first heard it on that Buffy episode with Glory. I looked it up then and yeah, it's just what the yanks call a Buck's Fizz.)

Dunno. I think I *would* call a BF a cocktail but not, say, a vodka and lime or such. Can't really justify it, it's just a gut fealing that it's more cocktaily. It sort of feels closer to, say, Kir Royale, which being 2 alcohols is on firmer cocktail ground.