Mixed Drinks And Cocktails Aren't Actually The Same Thing

If you like to occasionally sit back, relax, and imbibe with an alcoholic beverage or two in the evening, you probably have a favorite go-to drink that you make or order. Whether you prefer a simple vodka tonic, an upscale martini, or a fun and fruity margarita, you might not know that all of these drinks are not necessarily part of the same family. Of course, they are all beverages that contain alcohol as a central ingredient. But did you know that not all mixed alcoholic beverages can be considered a cocktail? In fact, there are a few differences that set a true cocktail apart from a simple mixed drink.

Humans have been drinking alcohol pretty much since the dawn of agriculture. Historians believe that the very first booze was fermented all the way back to 7000 BC in China, according to The Conversation. Many other civilizations later independently learned to make their own fermented boozy beverages, using whatever they had on hand, including corn, grapes, hops, and agave, to make wines, beers, and hard spirits like tequila. But while humans may have been getting tipsy for thousands of years, fancy cocktails didn't enter the picture until much, much later in human history.

The first recorded usage of the word "cocktail" only dates back to 1798, when it was first used to refer to spiced, flavored alcoholic punch in a British newspaper, according to VinePair. In 1806, a New York newspaper, The Balance and Columbian Repository, further defined the beverages as "a stimulating liquor composed of any kind of sugar, water and bitters, vulgarly called a bittered sling." But what exactly separates the upscale cocktail from the other, more loosely defined kinds of mixed alcoholic beverages that people had already been drinking for centuries?

It turns out, the answer to what sets the cocktail apart from a mixed drink is quite simple. It all comes down to the number of ingredients. "A mixed drink has a minimum of two ingredients, but once you get to a third ingredient, it's a cocktail," Keith Meicher, head bartender at Sepia bar in Chicago, explained to Food & Wine, adding "so all cocktails are mixed drinks. A mixed drink can also be a highball; I don't consider a highball a cocktail." 

So, as the name suggests, a mixed drink is simply a drink that requires mixing, which can require as few as two ingredients. However, a cocktail is a little more complicated.

Traditional cocktails were made with four ingredients: Alcohol, bitters, sugar, and water (per Food 52). The oldest recognized cocktail in history is the Sazerac, which was first mixed in 1838 by a New Orleans-based apothecary named Antoine Peychaud, according to Payless Liquors. The drink, which took its name from Sazerac-de-Forge, a type of French cognac, was made with whiskey, two ice cubes, aromatic bitters, orange bitters, absinthe, two sugar cubes, and a lemon zest rim. It remains the official cocktail of New Orleans today (via The Sazerac House).

Drink experts believe it takes a little something more than just a few extra ingredients to really turn a mixed drink into a cocktail. As Food & Wine shares, Joe Stinchcomb, the owner of Bar Muse in Oxford, Mississippi, defines "a mixed drink [as] a 'one and;' Jack and Coke, vodka and tonic, gin and tonic," while "a cocktail is something that takes time to make and create." Nickle Morris, co-owner of Louisville's Expo, agrees that cocktails are "taking a spirit and preparing it for enjoyment" and further notes, "if you don't put a lot of effort into the preparation, it's not a cocktail."

But no matter where exactly you draw the lines, a cocktail is a boozy beverage that requires a little more effort to craft than a simple mixed drink.