Australia's reigning bartender of the year, The Loft's Jason Williams, reveals the secrets behind some of the world's most popular tipples.
MARGARITA:
I'm pretty sure the margarita's the most popular cocktail in the world, if only for the simple fact of the number of middle-aged tourists drinking the frozen variety at places like Club Med or Noosa.
It's a very classic Mexican cocktail. Simply it's tequila, lime juice and Cointreau, or orange liquor, with an optional salt rim, served straight up.
It's hugely popular because of the frozen varieties and fruit versions - you can have it with frozen mango, for example.
We make a different variety called a Tommy's Margarita, which was popularised at a tequila bar in San Francisco called Tommy's.
Instead of using Cointreau as the sweetener, it uses something called agave syrup, which is a nectar similar to honey or maple syrup and derived from the same plant that tequila is made from. It's organic, four times sweeter than sugar, and it's really good.
COSMOPOLITAN:
The Cosmopolitan is like the gateway cocktail.
Women might have heard of it on Sex and the City, or from a girlfriend and it got them off the Marlborough sauvignon blanc and onto a cocktail and now they're starting to branch out a little bit.
I think its popularity is starting to wane a little bit now.
It's made with lemon vodka, or a citrus vodka, Cointreau or orange liquor, lime juice and cranberry juice.
It is actually based on a drink called a Kamikaze and it was created when Absolut Citron came out in US in the 1980s.
A Kamikaze is vodka, Cointreau and lime juice. A bartender in Miami called Cheryl Cook created the Cosmo by adding some cranberry juice to give it a pink hue.
Traditionally, it's meant to be quite a tart drink and the cranberry was just for a bit of colour, but now it's evolved to be this sweet, girly drink.
ESPRESSO MARTINI:
These have been getting really popular.
Basically it's vodka, fresh espresso, some coffee liquor like Kahlua and some sugar syrup, shaken and then strained and served with three coffee beans.
It was purportedly created in London by an influential old bartender called Dick Bradsell for a supermodel - apparently Naomi Campbell.
There are many versions of the story, but apparently at an afterparty she needed a drink to "wake her up and f*** her up".
And so Bradsell created the Pharmaceutical Stimulant - which was vodka and espresso on ice. That later evolved to become the Espresso Martini and twenty years on it's becoming quite a popular drink.
Have it with vodka, but then try it with a dark spirit, particularly rum. A nice, dark, sweet rum goes really well in that drink.
NEGRONI
This is a drink that's hugely popular with bartenders and popular in Italian restaurants.
It's a traditional aperitif cocktail. It's really bracing - there's quite a lot of alcohol in there - but at the same time it's citrusy, floral and has this bitter aftertaste that prepares your palate for nice food.
It has equal parts of a bitter liquor called Campari, gin and Italian sweet vermouth, served on ice. It's really simple to prepare but really tasty.
That drink was created in Florence in the early 1900s by a bartender called Fosco Scarselli at Caffe Casoni, for a man called Count Camillo Negroni.
It was his own twist on another drink called an Americano, which is made with Campari, vermouth and soda water. He just replaced the soda water with gin for something a little stronger.
MARTINI
Martinis are different - they're almost not even a cocktail. They're in their own little world.
Your general cocktail drinker won't drink a martini because it's just gin or vodka, vermouth stirred down with ice and served straight up. It's very much a drinker's drink.
When someone orders a martini, you can tell just by asking a couple of quick questions if they're ordering it because they're in a nice cocktail bar and they think they should, or they want to impress their friends, or they think they're James Bond.
First off, I ask them what kind of martini they'd like, because asking for a martini is like asking for a sandwich: you can have it with gin or vodka; dry, perfect or wet; with a twist or with olives - and they're just the basics.
A proper martini drinker will stipulate exactly how they want theirs.
I just ask, how does a double shot of cold gin in a cocktail glass sound to you? They'll either go, that sounds terrible or they'll turn to me and tell me that that sounds great and I should stop being a smart arse.
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