Do your eyes light up at the mention of Angostura? Do you mock your straight-shootin’ wine and beer friends for their lack of embellishment? Have you forgotten to get your dad a birthday present, and need to buy a gift voucher immediately?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, you need to begin your journey into mixology with some of London’s best cocktail-making classes.
The city is spoilt for amazing cocktail bars – and even more amazingly, the wizards behind those bars are willing to share their knowledge with us. It’s time to get scientific at a molecular cocktail night; learn to create sophisticated concoctions in equally grand settings; and even perfect the art of bao bun making while brushing up on your liquid education.
Claim your rightful title as the King/Queen of Cocktails with this curated list of the best cocktail-making classes in London…
Sauce by Langham | Marylebone
Laboratories are exciting. Period. They are steeped in novelty, experimentation, secrecy, and esoteric information. Plus, they harbour the very human drama of crushing failure and miraculous success. Now imagine you could experience making three exquisite cocktails and at some point visit the magical potions laboratory of the award-winning Artesian bar at The Langham Hotel. Alcohol-fuelled intrigue awaits.
Details: 1C Portland Place, W1B 1JA | £95
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TT Masterclasses | Shoreditch
Just imagine how plastered you’d be if you drank five cocktails in two hours. That’s not officially the sell for the cocktail making classes at TT, but it’s a bit of information worth thinking about. The official sell is that you get your own fully-kitted-out bar to share with up to five people of your choice. You receive expert tuition on how to make five cocktails in a laidback, workshop-like setting. Then, if they weren’t enough, there’s also a rooftop restaurant and a moody basement bar to continue the frivolity.
Details: 17B Kingsland Road, E2 8AA | £75
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69 Colebrooke Row | Islington
The power of a cocktail isn’t solely its alcohol content. It’s the story, the people behind the recipe, and the drama. At 69 Colebrooke Row, the smartly jacketed bartenders will deliver the basics on how to make classic, people-pleasing cocktails, but they’ll also give you the history and the mixology folklore. As always, it seems imbibing history is the only sensible way to do it.
Details: 69 Colebrooke Row, N1 8AA | £60
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Rules with Brian Silva | Covent Garden
This is for those who enjoy their cocktails in elegant, sophisticated settings, and an earnest conversation on the art of a good cocktail. Brian Silva is an expert cocktail-crafter who cares passionately about his Dry Martini (“always stirred, not shaken” – take that, Bond). The experience at Rules in Covent Garden offers two hours of cocktail tuition and a max. group size of four. Expect it to be intimate, informative and undeniably delicious.
Details: 35 Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, WC2E 7LB | £95
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Opium | Soho
This maze-like bar complex in Chinatown plays on the illegality, mystery and thrill of an opium den by obfuscating three cocktail bars inside one. The cocktail-making classes here offer the melding of spirits, mixers, liqueurs, dry ice, shrubs and “unusual ingredients” (classic Opium). Wild cocktails in a den serving dim sum? Mmm, yes please.
Details: The Jade Door, 15 – 16 Gerrard Street, W1D 6JE | £50/75 with dim sum
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Royal Cocktail Exchange | Fitzrovia
The drinks at The Royal Cocktail Exchange are jazzy and experimental, but their masterclasses threaten to pull back the curtain to reveal that cocktail making is actually very simple. You won’t have a mixology meltdown when you get back home, attempt your first cocktail, and find you don’t have a centrifuge kicking around. These guys have put together 4 masterclasses focussing on cocktails, whiskey, vodka/gin and rum), where you’ll develop the key foundations to making the best-tasting drinks at home with minimal stress – so you can put all your effort into just enjoying them. Isn’t that nice…
Details: 31 Windmill St, London W1T 2JN | £50
Like looking behind the scenes? Why not check out the best breweries in London…