When I turned 21 a friend gave me a copy of The Bartender’s Handbook for my birthday. Before then, I think I might have had a few sips of a Mike’s Hard Lemonade at a party — I wasn’t exactly a drinker. I quickly became obsessed with the book, however, and started holding weekly cocktail parties at my house after one of my night classes where a small group of us would try and make a new cocktail each week.
It was fun, but also expensive. When you don’t own any liquor and want to try something that has six ingredients, you have to buy six things. Multiply that by four weeks in the month, and we were talking about a ton of cash. I was also buying full bottles of things I might only need a few ounces of (I’m still toting around a bottle of banana liquor over a decade later).
Now one subscription service, Cocktail Courier, has taken the idea of learning a new cocktail to a new level: they send you everything you need, pre-measured, in the mail and all you have to do is mix. That means there’s no shopping to do on your end, and you always have everything you need to make the perfect drink, but not so much of it that you need to expand your liquor cabinet. It’s like those subscription food services, except with booze, and it’s amazing.
