Thanksgiving cocktails before dinner, with turkey, and after

Before dinner: a spritz, not a sour

The first drink should be cold, bitter, and lighter than the whiskey you will pour with the bird. An Aperol Spritz is the catalog pour: a wine glass of ice, 3 oz Aperol, 3 oz Prosecco, and a 1 oz splash of soda. Stir once. Drop an orange slice into the glass. Cava or another dry sparkling wine stands in for Prosecco if that is the bottle you bought for the table. Do not mix the wine in the morning. Bubbles die in a pitcher.

If gin, lemon, and sparkling wine are what you have, a French 75 is the other before-dinner drink: 1 oz gin, ½ oz lemon juice, and ½ oz simple syrup, shaken, strained into a flute, then topped with cold Champagne. One ounce of gin is the spec. More turns it into a sour with a splash of wine. Cognac can replace the gin if that older bottle is the one on the shelf.

No gin and no Aperol: a Champagne Cocktail reuses the sugar cube and Angostura you already need for an Old Fashioned. Saturate one cube with 2 dashes of bitters in a flute, add 1 oz cognac only if you want the depth, and top slowly with cold Champagne. That is a celebration pour from bottles the dinner drink already uses.

A Negroni is the still aperitivo when nobody wants bubbles: equal parts gin, Campari, and sweet vermouth, stirred over one large cube. It sits with the Martini on gin and vermouth cocktails. Open the Aperol Spritz recipe, the French 75 recipe, the Champagne Cocktail, or the Negroni recipe for the glass and the pantry match. More Aperol drinks are on the Aperol hub. Sparkling bottles are on Prosecco and Champagne.

With the turkey: stirred whiskey

Turkey, gravy, and stuffing are rich and salty. A bright shaken sour fights that plate. A stirred whiskey drink sits next to it. The Old Fashioned is 2 oz bourbon, one sugar cube soaked with 2 dashes of Angostura and a few dashes of water, muddled, then stirred with one large cube. Rye from the pantry makes it spicier. A bar spoon of simple syrup stands in when the cube box is empty, and the recipe says so. Sugar and syrup stay different ingredients on this site, so syrup alone will not mark the Old Fashioned ready.

The Manhattan is the vermouth cousin: 2 oz rye, 1 oz sweet vermouth, and 2 dashes of Angostura, stirred 20 to 30 seconds and strained into a chilled coupe. Bourbon makes a rounder Manhattan if rye is not in the house. Do not shake it. Air makes whiskey and vermouth cloudy and thin. A cherry is the usual garnish. An orange peel is the spicier swap.

If Campari and sweet vermouth are already open, a Boulevardier is the dinner whiskey that uses them: 1½ oz bourbon, 1 oz Campari, and 1 oz sweet vermouth, stirred over a large cube, finished with orange peel. People search it as a bourbon Negroni. It is the same stirred drink, and it is not a new bottle if those two are already on the shelf.

Open the Old Fashioned recipe, the Manhattan recipe, and the Boulevardier recipe. Whiskey drinks as a set are on the whiskey hub. Bourbon-named drinks are on the bourbon hub. Sweet vermouth is on sweet vermouth. The bitters bottle is on Angostura bitters. Campari, if you are pouring the Boulevardier, is on Campari.

After dinner: hot whiskey, or a sour if the room is warm

When the oven is off, the useful drink is hot and short. A Hot Toddy is 2 oz whiskey, 1 tbsp honey, ½ oz fresh lemon juice, and 4 oz water that has come off the boil. Warm the mug first. Boiling water flattens the aroma. Bourbon, Irish whiskey, or a blend all count as the whiskey line. A cinnamon stick or a clove is a garnish on that recipe, not a required bottle and not its own drink. This catalog has no pumpkin cocktail. Do not shop for one.

Irish Coffee is the other hot whiskey drink, and it is not a toddy with coffee stirred in. Warm the glass, dissolve 2 tsp demerara sugar with 1½ oz Irish whiskey and 6 oz hot coffee, then float 1 oz cream whipped only until it ribbons. Do not stir after the cream is on. White sugar works if demerara is not in the pantry. The Irish Coffee recipe and the Hot Toddy recipe are different shopping lists: coffee and cream versus water, honey, and lemon.

If the house is warm and nobody wants a mug, shake a Whiskey Sour when you serve it: 2 oz whiskey, ¾ oz lemon, and ¾ oz simple syrup. Egg white is optional. Dry-shake the white, then shake with ice. A Penicillin is the ginger-honey Scotch sour — blended Scotch, lemon, honey-ginger syrup, and a peated float — only when that syrup is already made. A jar of honey does not mark it ready. Honey syrup is a different ingredient from the tablespoon in the toddy. The Gold Rush wants that same syrup with bourbon and lemon.

Cranberry juice on the table does not create a cranberry Old Fashioned here. The one catalog drink that uses cranberry juice is the Cosmopolitan: vodka, triple sec, 1 oz cranberry juice, and lime, shaken and served up. That is a coupe sour, not a dinner whiskey. Mix it only if the juice, the vodka, and an orange liqueur are already open. If the coffee pot is still hot and you want the drink cold, an Espresso Martini is vodka, coffee liqueur, and a fresh shot, shaken hard for the foam. It wants a coffee liqueur, which Irish Coffee does not.

Batch the stirred drinks. Shake the sours to order.

A Thanksgiving table is four to twelve people, not one coupe. Stirred drinks batch. Shaken drinks and sparkling drinks do not, at least not for the whole afternoon.

For Old Fashioneds, Manhattans, and Boulevardiers, mix the spirits, the vermouth or Campari, and the bitters in a clean bottle in the morning. Add cold water for the dilution a stir would have given you — about a quarter of the batch volume is a workable home measure — then taste one ounce over ice. Chill the bottle. At dinner, pour an Old Fashioned over one large cube, or strain a Manhattan into a chilled coupe. Build a single test drink the night before so the water is not a guess at 4 p.m.

Do not put Prosecco, Champagne, or soda in that bottle. An Aperol Spritz is built in the glass: ice, Aperol, wine, soda, one stir. You can pre-measure the Aperol. Open the sparkling wine when the first guest wants a glass. A French 75 gets the same treatment: shake the gin, lemon, and syrup to order, then top.

A Whiskey Sour and an Espresso Martini need the shaker because of ice and foam. Pre-measure the still ingredients in a pitcher if you want speed, then shake one drink at a time. Egg white does not sit in a batch for hours. A Hot Toddy batches as a cold concentrate: whiskey, honey, and lemon juice stirred until the honey dissolves, kept in a jar. One serving of that mix is the recipe's 2 oz whiskey, 1 tbsp honey, and ½ oz lemon — multiply by the number of mugs. Pour one serving into a warm mug and add 4 oz hot water. Do not boil the concentrate. Do not add the water in the morning.

A bottle list that fits a home pantry

Buy for the three slots, not for a twelve-bottle bar. One bourbon covers the Old Fashioned and stands in for rye in a Manhattan and for generic whiskey in a toddy and a Whiskey Sour. Rye is the second whiskey only if you want the spicier Manhattan and the spicier Old Fashioned as written. Sweet vermouth is the Manhattan and the Boulevardier. Angostura and a box of sugar cubes are the Old Fashioned and the Champagne Cocktail. Aperol, a dry sparkling wine, and soda water are the spritz. A lemon and a jar of honey are the toddy. That is the dinner.

Campari is the extra that turns bourbon and sweet vermouth into a Boulevardier, and gin plus those two into a Negroni. Skip it if the spritz is the before-dinner drink and the Old Fashioned is the dinner drink. Irish whiskey, coffee, demerara sugar, and cream are Irish Coffee only. Do not buy them for a toddy. Cranberry juice, vodka, and triple sec are a Cosmopolitan only.

Amaro Nonino is a Paper Plane only — equal parts bourbon, Aperol, Nonino, and lemon, shaken and served up. It is a poor first buy for one Thursday. Leave water, ice, orange peel, cinnamon sticks, and cloves off any list you pay for. Ice is the freezer. The peel is the fruit bowl. The stick and the clove are garnishes on the toddy, not bottles. Amaretto is a separate dessert sour, the Amaretto Sour, if that bottle is already open. It is not part of this short list.

What to buy if you are one bottle short

If the shelf already has bourbon, the missing piece for a dinner drink is either Angostura and a sugar cube (Old Fashioned) or sweet vermouth (Manhattan, with bourbon standing in for rye). If Aperol is open and the wine fridge has Prosecco, you already have the before-dinner drink. Soda is the splash, and a supermarket bottle is enough. If a lemon and honey are in the kitchen, any whiskey you are already drinking finishes the toddy.

If Almost There is showing sweet vermouth, that one bottle moves the Manhattan to Ready to Mix and, with Campari, the Boulevardier. If it is showing sparkling wine, that bottle finishes the Spritz and the French 75. If it is showing honey, buy honey for the toddy. Buy honey syrup only if a Penicillin or a Gold Rush is the drink you actually want. Those two do not accept the tablespoon from the jar.

Shopping list ranks missing bottles by how many complete recipes they cover from the pantry you checked off. For this dinner, pin the short card on a cocktail menu so the list is only the gaps for those drinks. The full catalog is on all recipes. More guides are on the blog.