The top 25 cocktails of the past 25 years

You can find well-crafted cocktails in nearly every corner of the world these days, but the state of cocktails prior to their renaissance at the beginning of the century was fairly dismal. Sickly sweet concoctions meant for getting you drunk were the norm; finely crafted drinks that offered layers of flavor were rare. Things changed starting in the 2000s, with mixologists bringing both art and science behind the bar to create memorable drinks. Food and Wine takes a look back at the top 25 of these cocktails.

The list kicks off with Audrey Sanders’ Gin Gin Mule, which Sanders brought to life in 2000 prior to founding her groundbreaking NYC bar, Pegu Club, in 2005. This shows how bartenders were breaking apart classic cocktails and reassembling them in novel ways. Speaking of 2005, that is the year when perhaps the most influential pre-social media cocktail was invented – the Penicillin. It gained cult status the old-fashioned way, by word of mouth.

Other cocktails in the list include the Benton’s Old-Fashioned, which introduced the fat-washing technique; the Paper Plane, inspired by the classic Last Word cocktail; and Jeffrey Morgenthaler’s Amaretto Sour, which rehabilitated the one-dimensional drink from the 1970s. There are no drinks later than 2014 on this list, perhaps because the list was meant more as a “most important” recount rather than a “most popular” one. I think this is also due to the changing nature of cocktail culture – younger drinkers are drifting toward lower-proof beverages and cocktail consumption has been slowing overalls.