Give liqueurs and cremes some love and you’ll have the classics licked, says Marcis Dzelzainis

Premixes are the Vauxhall Astra of the barworld: as sexy as corduroy, but practical? Hell yeah! Nushi Wijewardena and a team of bartenders put a stack of time-saving contenders to the test.

Enough of the historical stuff – here are some fresh ideas to get the bartending ball rolling, says Marcis Dzelzainis

Spending all that time and effort on the perfect cocktail ingredients, then using half-melted, chlorine-infused ice is as ridiculous as putting a nodding dog in a Porsche. Time to tune in, turn on and chill out, says Alice Lascelles

The complete-o Mojito: the last word in customised Mojitos

The film Cocktail is 20 years young this year, and with so many kids now wearing clothes straight out of the 80s, it seemed the perfect time for Tom Sandham to re-visit the movie that has inspired a generation of bartenders

Scented, flavoursome and adorned with beautiful flowers, herbs are an essential ingredient for any cocktail list this summer. Alice Lascelles digs deep...

This month: Why do we frown upon buying asparagus flown in from Peru, yet we think nothing of ordering a bottle of gold-filtered water from the foothills of the Himalayas?

A growing number of drinks are enhancing their recipes with ingredients reputed to make you party harder and feel better. Alice Lascelles gets to know her guarana from her ginkgo and finds out what the bartenders make of it

Jim Meehan, co-owner of New York’s cult hot-dog-stand-turned- cocktail-bar PDT, has just picked up Tales of the Cocktail gongs for Best American Bartender and World’s Best Cocktail Bar in New Orleans. Alice Lascelles asks the man from Please Don’t Tell to Please Tell All...

Bartenders today are blessed with an array of witty, wise – and eminently collectible – contemporary and vintage cocktail books to choose from. Tom Innes takes a look...