Bitters

Q: What are cocktail bitters?

Bitters are intensely concentrated flavourings — botanicals, spices and fruit steeped in alcohol — used by the dash to season cocktails, the way a chef uses salt and spice. A few drops add depth, balance and aroma.

Q: What cocktails need bitters?

The Old Fashioned and Manhattan lean on aromatic bitters; the Sazerac demands Peychaud's; a proper Dry Martini loves a dash of orange bitters; and a Bloody Mary comes alive with celery bitters. Even soda water gets interesting with a dash or two.

Q: Do bitters contain alcohol?

Most contain alcohol — some a lot, some barely any — but since you use them literally drops at a time, the amount in a finished drink is tiny. That's also why a single bottle lasts for years.

Buy Cocktail Bitters Online — Tiny Bottles, Massive Flavour Cocktail bitters are the seasoning of the bar — dashes of concentrated flavour that turn decent drinks into memorable ones, drop by drop....

Bitters

Buy Cocktail Bitters Online — Tiny Bottles, Massive Flavour

Cocktail bitters are the seasoning of the bar — dashes of concentrated flavour that turn decent drinks into memorable ones, drop by drop.

Ask any bartender: the difference between a good Old Fashioned and a great one usually lives in a four-inch bottle. We stock the essentials and the adventurous — from New Orleans legends to flavours you didn't know you needed.

Which bitters should I choose?

Peychaud's is the New Orleans icon behind the Sazerac. The Fee Brothers range covers West Indian Orange, Grapefruit, Cranberry and even Celery for the experimentalists, while Martini Riserva Speciale Bitter handles Negroni duty in a full-size bottle.

How to use bitters

By the dash: two or three in an Old Fashioned or Manhattan, a dash of orange bitters in a Martini, celery bitters in a Bloody Mary. They also rescue a plain soda water rather magnificently.