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In 2025, Food & Wine readers leaned hard into cocktail nostalgia and tropical escape.
From booze-forward, two-ingredient classics like the Rusty Nail and the Stinger to “vacations in a glass” like the Limoncello Spritz, Ranch Water, and Daiquirà Clásico, our readers were thirsty for romance and respite. Tropical favorites such as the Jungle Bird and the Singapore Sling also saw a surge in popularity.
With rapid advancements in AI and digital technology, many people seemed to look to the recent past for familiar comforts. Modern classic cocktails — some now old enough to enter their “vintage” era — resurfaced in a big way. The Gin Blossom, Tommy’s Margarita, and the Naked & Famous continue to draw interest in 2025.
This return to beloved drinks of the Rat Pack era, mid-century tropical escapism, and the early 2000s proves that everything old truly can be new again.
Here are Food & Wine’s 25 most popular cocktail recipes published in 2025.
Love any of these recipes? Tap “Save” to add them to MyRecipes, your new, free recipe box for Food & Wine.
Rusty Nail
Tim Nusog / Food & Wine
This two-ingredient cocktail was a favorite of Frank Sinatra’s in the 1960s and combines Scotch whisky with Drambuie, a honey-sweetened herbal liqueur made with a base of blended scotch. As our most popular cocktail recipe published in 2025, it’s clearly well-positioned for a Rat Pack comeback.
Gin Blossom
Jennifer Causey / Food Styling by Emily Nabors Hall / Prop Styling by Christina Daley
Created by veteran bartender Julie Reiner in 2008 for her Brooklyn, New York bar Clover Club, this Martini variation features equal parts blanc vermouth and apricot eau-de-vie alongside a botanical-forward gin. This aromatic combination results in a cocktail that Reiner calls “a Martini for the masses.”
Tommy’s Margarita
Food & Wine / Tim Nusog
This simplified take on the world’s most popular cocktail has made this a modern classic and bartender favorite. Created by Julio Bermejo in the early 1990s at his family’s restaurant, Tommy’s Mexican in San Francisco, Tommy’s Margarita swaps traditional triple sec for agave nectar, highlighting the earthy, vegetal notes of high-quality tequila rather than citrus.
Limoncello Spritz
Jennifer Causey / Food Styling by Emily Nabors Hall / Prop Styling by Julia Bayless
This two-ingredient sparkler combines limoncello and sparkling wine, resulting in a tangy and fragrant drink with balanced acidity. Refreshing and light, the herb garnish adds a pop of green and fresh aromatics.
Pegu Club
Tim Nusog / Food & Wine
Gin, orange liqueur, fresh lime juice, and bitters come together in this classic sour cocktail said to have been invented around the turn of the 20th century at a bar located in the Pegu Club, a members’ club in Southeast Asia.Â
Ranch Water
Food & Wine / Photo by Morgan Hunt Glaze / Prop Styling by Phoebe Hausser / Food Styling by Jennifer Wendorf
This unofficial drink of West Texas is the simplest of tequila highballs. blanco tequila, fresh lime juice, and chilled sparkling water, such as Topo Chico, is combined directly in a tall cocktail glass or soda bottle, with a wedge of lime.
Stinger
Tim Nusog / Food & Wine
Only two ingredients make up a Stinger: cognac and white crème de menthe. Said to have first been created in the early 1900s, this refreshing, lightly sweet, and complex cocktail was a favorite among New York high society in the early 20th century.
Rum Negroni (Kingston Negroni)
Food & Wine / Photo by Jennifer Causey / Food Styling by Rishon Hanners / Prop Styling by Lydia Pursell
Based on the classic three-ingredient equal-parts Negroni, this riff swaps gin for rum and combines with the traditional sweet vermouth and Campari.
Saturn
Jennifer Causey / Food Styling by Chelsea Zimmer / Prop Styling by Christina Daley
This frozen tropical cocktail was created by California bartender J. “Popo” Galsini for the 1967 International Bartender’s Association World Championship, and blends gin, lemon juice, passion fruit syrup, orgeat, and falernum with crushed ice.Â
Tinto de Verano
Jennifer Causey / Food Styling by Emily Nabors Hall / Prop Styling by Julia Bayless
Another two-ingredient cocktail, this popular Spanish drink is made with equal parts dry red wine and lemon-lime soda. The fruity and refreshing low-ABV drink is served over ice with a lemon slice garnish and can also be thought of as a two-ingredient spritz or an individual sangria.
Naked & Famous
Tim Nusog / Food & Wine
This modern classic, created by bartender JoaquĂn SimĂł around 2011, while at New York City’s Death & Co., is an equal-parts cocktail made up of mezcal, Aperol, Yellow Chartreuse, and lime juice. Smoky and bittersweet, this drink helped introduce U.S. audiences to mezcal as a category and cocktail ingredient.
Whiskey Smash
Food & Wine / Tim Nusog
This vibrant whiskey cocktail is part of a category of drinks that can be traced to the 1840s and is a simple build of bourbon, sugar, lemon, and mint.
Singapore Sling
Food & Wine / Photo by Morgan Hunt Glaze / Food Styling by Jennifer Wendorf / Prop Styling by Phoebe Hausser
This tropical classic dates to the 18th century and combines gin, cherry liqueur, orange liqueur, Bénédictine, pineapple and lime juices, bitters, and club soda. Created as a single-serving punch without citrus, the drink evolved to include lime juice.
Churchill
Tim Nusog / Food & Wine
This mid-century classic, at the legendary American Bar inside London’s Savoy Hotel, combines blended scotch, sweet vermouth, orange liqueur, and lime juice. The resulting drink is a scotch mashup of a Whiskey Sour and Manhattan.
Daiquirà Clásico
Greg Dupree / FOOD STYLING by JULIAN HENSARLING / PROP STYLING by CHRISTINA DALEY
Rum, fresh lime juice, and sugar come together to create one of the most famous cocktails ever created: the Daiquiri. This 19th-century cocktail is a classic sour, such as the Margarita and Gimlet, and is often considered a litmus test for a serious cocktail bar.
Zombie
Food & Wine / Photo by Jake Sternquist / Food Styling by Holly Dreesman / Prop Styling by Sue Mitchell
This potent tropical favorite, invented by legendary barman Donn Beach in the 1930s, mixes three types of rum, lime juice, Don’s Mix No. 2 — a mix of cinnamon syrup and fresh grapefruit juice — falernum, grenadine, absinthe, and bitters.
Transfusion
Food & Wine / Photo by Jake Sternquist / Food Styling by Holly Dreesman / Prop Styling by Sue Mitchell
This refreshing highball, first appearing on golf courses in the mid-century, is a combination of vodka, grape juice, ginger ale, and freshly squeezed lime juice. Popular golf lore suggests the drink was created by President Dwight D. Eisenhower while playing a round of 18 holes, but historians have since disproven this theory. The bright and bubbly drink has made a resurgence in recent years.
Como Spritz
Greg DuPree / Food Styling by Margaret Monroe Dickey / Prop Styling by Claire Spollen
Developed by veteran bartenders Sam Ross and Michael McIlroy for their New York City bar Good Guy’s, this low-ABV spritz is a fruity and bittersweet sparkling wine cocktail made with Cynar amaro, tangy passion fruit syrup, fresh lemon juice, and sparkling wine. Tropical and herbaceous, the drink is garnished with an orange slice for a burst of citrus.
Jet Pilot
Food & Wine / Photo by Fred Hardy / Food Styling by Julian Hensarling / Prop Styling by Hannah Greenwood
Created in 1958 at the Luau in Beverly Hills, this tropical classic consists of three types of rum, grapefruit and lime juice, falernum, cinnamon syrup, and a dash of both absinthe and Angostura bitters. The drink is thought to have been inspired by Don the Beachcomber’s Test Pilot cocktail (based on its name), but is closer in ingredient makeup to the Zombie.
Revolver
Tim Nusog / Food & Wine
This bourbon-and-coffee-liqueur cocktail was created by bartender Jon Santer around 2004, and made famous at San Francisco’s Bourbon & Branch. It’s essentially an Espresso Manhattan with a flamed orange peel.
Carajillo
Food & Wine / Photo by Jen Causey / Food Styling by Emily Nabors Hall / Prop Styling by Josh Hoggle
The Carajillo, a two-ingredient coffee cocktail that combines Licor 43, an herbal Spanish liqueur, with freshly brewed espresso, is the unofficial party drink in Mexico City. It’s also a popular drink after dinner, during the lingering, post-meal sobremesa.
Jungle Bird
Food & Wine / Tim Nusog
Bartender Jeffrey Ong created this bittersweet, tropical drink in the 1970s at the Kuala Lumpur Hilton in Malaysia. Campari, dark rum, lime juice, pineapple juice, and simple syrup come together in this fruity, balanced, and refreshing vacation cocktail.
Hotel Nacional Special
Food & Wine / Tim Nusog
Created in the 1930s, this Daiquiri variation is made with rum, apricot liqueur, pineapple juice, lime juice, and simple syrup and is named for the Hotel Nacional de Cuba, a historic hotel in Havana, just down the road from Cuba’s most famous bar, El Floridita.
Gin Gin Mule
Food & Wine / Photo by Jen Causey /Â Food Styling by Jennifer Wendorf /Â Prop Styling by Claire Spollen
This zesty mashup of a Mojito and a Moscow Mule was created by Audrey Saunders in 2000, and made famous at her influential cocktail bar, Pegu Club in New York City. The refreshing highball combines gin, ginger beer, simple syrup, freshly squeezed lime juice, and fresh mint.
Clover Club
Tim Nusog / Food & Wine
Invented in the late 1800s and named for the Philadelphia social club where the drink first appeared, The Clover Club is essentially a Gin Sour that swaps simple syrup for raspberry syrup. Fresh lemon juice and egg white help to balance the drink and lend a frothy finish.
