Cocktails with other spirits

This is where the spirits live that do not warrant a section of their own but hold up some of the best drinks there are. Pisco is a grape spirit made in Peru and Chile, in two distinct styles — the Peruvian bottled without any time in wood, the Chilean sometimes not — and it is what lifts a Pisco Sour. Brazilian cachaça is distilled from freshly pressed sugarcane juice rather than the molasses most rums use, and that is where the dry, vegetal edge that defines a Caipirinha comes from.

The Italian bitters belong here too, though technically they are liqueurs rather than spirits. Aperol sits around 11% ABV, which is why a Spritz can be drunk mid-afternoon without consequence; Campari is considerably stronger and more bitter, and it is what holds a Negroni together. Neither is meant to be drunk alone: they exist to work alongside something else and bring the bitterness the base spirit lacks.