The Best Gifts for Cocktail Lovers

The BARE BARREL mixology kit is the gift to buy a cocktail lover — stainless tools, a stand so they stay together, a recipe guide, and gift packaging that means you are not wrapping a shaker in a bag. If they already own tools, buy the OGGI ice bucket instead: it is the object most home bars are missing and the one nobody buys themselves.

The picks

The three gaps worth buying into

Home bars fail in predictable places, and all three are gifts. The first is measurement: people who make good drinks by taste still pour inconsistently, and a jigger is the cheapest accuracy there is. The second is glassware, because enthusiasm goes into bottles long before it goes into what the drink is served in. The third is ice, which gets treated as free and is the thing that actually limits an evening.

Buy into whichever gap is open. A kit covers the first, coupes cover the second, a bucket covers the third. Our full list of what a working bar needs is in home bar essentials.

Why the coupe beats the martini glass

The V-shaped martini glass is the icon and the coupe is the glass bars actually use. A coupe bowl is shallower and rounder, so the drink does not ride up to a wide open rim where a nudged elbow becomes a spill. It also stacks into a cupboard without a negotiation.

The Libbey Vina set gives you both shapes, which is the honest answer: the martini glass is worth owning for the two drinks it flatters and the coupe is worth owning for everything else. More on shapes in the best cocktail glasses.

Matching the gift to the drinker

• The beginner. A boxed kit with a recipe guide. The recipes matter more than the steel: the barrier to a first cocktail is not equipment, it is not knowing the ratios.
• The brown-spirits drinker. The decanter set. It is the one gift here that is partly decorative, and it is the right call for somebody whose drinking is a bottle of rye and a large cube.
• The one who already has tools. Glassware or ice. Do not buy a second shaker — a cocktail lover with a shaker has the shaker they want.
• The one with a bar cart. Anything that improves how the cart looks earns its place. Finish-matched tools in black or gold are a real gift to somebody who arranges a cart on purpose, and how to style a bar cart covers what else belongs on it.

The budget ladder

• Modest: a set of coupes. Small object, immediate upgrade to every drink they make.
• The standard good gift: the BARE BARREL kit, or the Idymere tools if the cart is on display.
• The quietly excellent one: the OGGI ice bucket, with tongs included.
• Generous: the LUCKYGOOBO set for a complete bar, or the Cork & Mill decanter set as a centerpiece.

What to skip

• Novelty ice molds. Giant sphere and skull molds are fun once and then they are a tray taking up a freezer shelf.
• Mixer sample boxes. Syrups and bitters are deeply personal and mostly go stale behind the bottles.
• A second shaker. The most common duplicate gift in this category.

If you are buying the bottle as well

A working home bar runs on about six bottles: a gin, a whiskey, a vodka or tequila, a dry vermouth, one liqueur and a bottle of bitters. That combination makes most of the standard drinks, and it is the list worth buying into if you want the gift to include something to pour.

Buy within that list rather than outside it. An unusual amaro is a lovely idea and it is also a bottle that sits unopened, because it fits into two recipes neither of you knows. The bottle somebody already uses is always the safer gift, and the equipment is where the surprise should come from.

One caution on gifting alcohol: some retailers and most carriers will not ship it, so a bottle usually has to be handed over in person. If the gift is going in the post, keep it to the kit and the glassware.

Buying for somebody who is not drinking

A fair number of people who love cocktails are drinking less of them, and the equipment is unchanged. Shakers, jiggers, strainers, coupes and ice all do exactly the same work for a non-alcoholic drink, and the craft is the part those people miss rather than the alcohol. A kit with a recipe guide is still the right gift; just skip the bottle.