For this weeks project, I wanted to talk about ordering a drink. Not how to walk into a bar and order something, but what goes into actually ordering a drink. Orders like “a dry Hendricks martini, dirty, on the rocks” tells you a lot about the drink you’ll have to make. Starting with the cocktails name, martini, tells us what drink we’re making. Then, every other word and term used tells us how we modify the drink, how we change the recipe. Its important to know too, as a bartender and a customer. If your a bartender and you make a drink differently from the customers order, you coulda lost out on your tip. If your a customer and you order something without knowing what your saying, you could get a drink you didn’t really want. Today, I wanted to explain how it works, what the terms mean, and how to use them.

I’ve realized that all the terms I know can be loosely put into three different categories. In one way or another, everything you say changes cocktail, either by the ingredients, how its made, and how its presented.

Terms about Ingredients

Images take from TimeOut.com

There are many ways to change a cocktails ingredients, from changing what type of liquor is used, to what modifiers and mixers are used, extra ingredients, and how much of each is used.

When it comes to the liquor you order, whether on its own or in a cocktail, we have three terms to describe the quality of the liquor.

Well: The liquor you’ll use for any drink, if the customer doesn’t specify. Usually the cheapest.

Call: The liquors that are a step up from the well, usually a bit higher quality at a bit higher price.

Top-shelf: The most expensive liquors the bar can offer, which usually means highest quality.

Another important thing to recognize is the names of the different liquors, as in recognizing that “Macallan 12” is a scotch, though that really just comes with spending time in the bar to memorize what you can offer.

Then, we have terminology that doesn’t talk about the liquor itself, but the other things we add to a cocktail. These can be broad, like a splash of something. Ordering something with a splash of lemon or lime juice, for example. Its typically adding less than half an ounce of anything to a cocktail. Similar, we have a twist. A twist of something involves taking the peal of a fruit, usually citrus, and adding it to the cocktail to add a touch of flavor. This could be an orange twist in an old fashioned, or a lemon twist for a martini. Check out my

Then we have words like dry, with multiple meanings. Dry typically means putting less of whatever sweetener or flavoring of a cocktail. A dry martini, for example, has less vermouth. A dry old fashioned has less simple syrup and bitters. Wet is the opposite of dry, adding a bit more of the ingredients to the drink. Getting more specific, we have dirty, a term basically only used when ordering a martini, meaning to add olive juice to the cocktail.

Terms about Making the Cocktail

Images taken from BottleNeckMGMT.com

A customer will often specify how they prefer a drink is made. This could be specifying shaken or stirred, which I’ve gone into the differences between the two in one of my previous posts, click here if you want to read about it. The other general ways we make drinks are built, which means that all ingredients are simply poured into the class. Then there’s layered, which I also discussed pretty thoroughly in this post. There’s also blended, which is blending a drink with ice, often used for marguerites, pina colada’s, or daquiris. These drinks are often quite strong, blending them helps take some of the “bite” away from it. Though, these can often be enjoyed shaken as well. Then, we have neat, which means no ice, not chilled. While this is often used for people sipping spirit on their own, since without ice or chilling it, you don’t water down the spirit at all.

Terms about Presentation

Images taken from Liquor.com

The presentation of a drink usually talks about the glass its served in, what kind of ice it uses, or the garnish it has. Asking for a difference of garnish is usually as simple as “wedge of lemon”, no complicated terms there. There are plenty of interesting ways to garnish though, I may have to give it its own post.

When talking about the different glasses, we do have a few terms. Short means to put it in a short glass, smaller than its usual size. We usually see this mixed drinks, like vodka sodas, to lessen the amount of mixer used in the cocktail, to let the customer taste more of the liquor. Tall, similarly, means to put it in a larger glass to add more mixer to the cocktail. We also have up, which means to put the cocktail into a raised glass with a stem, like a martini or coupe glass.

Then, there’s the ice, which has a few terms of its own. On the rocks means poured over ice cubes. On the opposite, we have straight which typically means chilled and mixed together, before being poured without ice. Straight up is interesting as it sort of used in two ways. Usually, its a combination of straight and up, chilled and mixed in a raised glass. The glass being raised helps the chilled drink stay cold a little bit longer. However, some just use it the same way as straight, just chilled and poured in a glass. We have other terms for using ice, like on a block, or one rock meaning the cocktail is poured over one large ice cube. This meets a decent medium between straight and on the rocks. Poured over multiple smaller ice cubes, which keep your drink cold but can melt fast and water it down a bit. Pouring it over one large cube, the ice melts much slower keeping the drink colder longer, with less watering down. Then there’s crushed ice where the ice is crushed or smashed into smaller pieces for your cocktail.

Now, there’s plenty more terminology involved when ordering cocktails, much more broad things like a double meaning to double the amount of liquor in the drink I had always found that kind of thing a bit easier to understand, but not everyone may feel the same. I found  a pretty large list from Demitri’s Gourmet Mixes. There’s many terms on there that I found really interesting. There’s also this video this video talking about more of these terms and explaining them.