Know what's in your glass
Get to know the ingredients behind your favourite drinks. Explore each category's character, discover bottles to try and find recipes that show what they can do, from a few drops of bitters to the spirit at the heart of a cocktail.
All ingredients
More about our ingredients
Every ingredient brings something different to the glass. Learning how those flavours fit together makes a recipe easier to understand and gives you a useful starting point for your own experiments.
Some spirits lead with fruit or botanicals, while others bring the character of grain, agave or time in a barrel. Even within a familiar category, two bottles can offer quite different flavours. Our ingredient pages introduce those differences and connect them with bottles and recipes to explore.
The supporting ingredients deserve just as much attention. Vermouth can add herbal depth, a liqueur can bring sweetness and a distinct flavour, and a mixer can change both the balance and the texture of a drink. A small measure of bitters may be the detail that brings everything together.
Start with the drink you want to make
Choose a recipe that appeals to you, then look at the role of each ingredient. Which one supplies the main flavour? Where do sweetness, acidity and bitterness come from? Understanding those relationships is more useful than collecting bottles without a plan.
Use these categories as a way into the wider world of ingredients. Follow a familiar favourite to discover something nearby, compare different styles, and return to the recipes when you want to see how an ingredient works alongside others.