If you’ve ever wondered how a famous cocktail’s ingredient list came to be, it’s worth taking a look at when it was made. Almost any pre-Prohibition cocktail’s original specs mostly hover around the three-to-four-ingredient range. By the time the tiki craze was underway in the ‘30s and ‘40s, it was par for the course to see drinks containing over seven ingredients and multiple expressions of rum layered on top of one another. And with the modern cocktail renaissance of the late ‘90s and early aughts, everything came full-circle as bartenders breathed new life into forgotten, bare-bones classics by riffing and reimagining them with different spirits and modifiers. And now, we find ourselves in a time when anything goes as cocktail culture embraces its molecular-gastronomy era — carbonated fish sauce and duck-fat-washed bourbon in the same glass? Why the hell not?
We’re all for experimentation, but in the drinks world, there is such a thing as too many ingredients. And while a cocktail containing a slew of spirits, herbs, juices, and tinctures may win curiosity, the finished product can also be a letdown.
To find the spec sweet spot, we asked eight bartenders how many cocktail ingredients is just too many. And just like some builds themselves, their answers were complicated. Let’s dive in.
How many cocktail ingredients is too many, according to bartenders:
“I’d liken it to the difference between walking into an Italian restaurant and an Indian restaurant. In the case of Italian cuisine, the predominant olfactory experience you
