The best Cosmopolitan recipe

The Cosmo may only have four ingredients, but numerous potential combinations produce very different cocktails, some balanced, some tart and others sweet. Indeed, the two bartenders most identified with this cocktail, Toby Cecchini and Dale DeGroff, each have very different recipes, with Toby himself declaring his "way too dry and way too sour," saying, "my palate veers towards the very austere and dry."

If you also have a dry palate, then Toby's Cosmopolitan recipe may be for you. You could adjust it with a dash of added sugar syrup or instead try Dale DeGroff's Cosmopolitan recipe, considered by many the de facto standard. Predictably, I prefer my Cosmopolitan recipe, which I've tweaked and hopefully perfected over the years.

The Cosmo is identified with citrus vodka, but its intense flavours can overpower the other ingredients. Instead, You can opt for unflavored vodka or a combination of flavoured and unflavoured vodkas that stays closer to this cocktail's DNA while allowing control of the degree of citrus.

Most cocktails benefit from drops or even dashes of bitters and/or saline solution, and I add saline to my Cosmopolitan. When using unflavoured vodka, a couple of dashes of orange, lemon, or even grapefruit bitters also work well. You may also consider cranberry bitters.

The Cosmopolitan rose to prominence and became a contemporary classic due to its durability – almost no two bartenders choose to make it precisely the same way, yet what they produce is likely to be tasty and recognisably a Cosmo.