Forget collecting bottles. Collect places, people, flavours and stories.
Drinks are about far more than what’s inside the bottle. They’re also about where they’re made, who makes them, the bars or shops where we discover them and the people we share them with.
So rather than another list of bottles you need to drink before you die, here’s a different kind of drinks bucket list.
33 experiences. How many can you complete?
DISCOVERY
1. Visit a distillery you’ve never heard of.
Forget the famous names for a day. Find somewhere small, new or overlooked. You may discover something brilliant.
2. Find a great bar you’ve walked past dozens of times.
Sit at the bar rather than a table. Ask what they’re proudest of pouring.
3. Drink a spirit from a country you’ve never tried before.
Whisky from Brazil. Rum from Australia. Gin from India. Brandy from South Africa. Explore the drinks map.
4. Try a spirit made somewhere you would not expect to be made.
English whisky. Danish rum. Indian single malt. Brazilian gin. Great spirits aren’t constrained by traditional geography.
5. Find a bar with no television and put your phone away.
Good bars existed before screens did. Give the people, place and drink your attention.
6. Order the bartender’s choice.
Tell them what flavours you like—and what you don’t. Then surrender control.
COURAGE
7. Taste a spirit category you think you may dislike.
Maybe you don’t hate tequila. Maybe you’ve just had the wrong tequila experience.
8. Go to a whisky, rum, gin or other spirits tasting alone.
You may arrive knowing nobody. You probably won’t leave that way.
9. Ask a bartender for the most underrated bottle behind the bar (or at your local spirits shop)
Not the rarest. Not the most expensive. The bottle they think deserves more attention.
10. Try a spirit blind.
No brand. No price. No age statement. No reputation. Just your senses.
11. Order something you’ve never heard of.
And don’t Google it first. Let the liquid introduce itself.
12. Ask a distiller or blender how they would improve their own spirit.
Every spirit involves compromises and choices. The answer may tell you more than the tasting notes.
CREATION
13. Create your own signature cocktail.
Give it a name. Make it again and again until it’s genuinely good enough that you’d serve it to someone else.
14. Build a three-spirit blind tasting for friends.
Same category. Similar price if possible. Watch reputation and misconceptions disappear when the labels disappear.
15. Make the same classic cocktail with three different base spirits.
Change one variable and learn what the spirit actually contributes.
16. Create your perfect home spirits shelf.
Ten bottles maximum. Every bottle must earn its place.
17. Pair a spirit with something unexpected.
Cheese. Chocolate. Coffee. Cigars. Dessert. Food from another culture. Experiment.
18. Create your own imaginary spirits brand.
Name. Liquid. Bottle. Story. Price. Consumer. Where would you sell it?
Anyone who works in the drinks industry should find this either surprisingly easy—or surprisingly difficult.
19. Make a cocktail using a genuinely local ingredient.
Fruit. Herbs. Honey. Tea. Coffee. Botanicals. Give your drink a sense of place.
WISDOM
20. Learn to identify five aromas blind.
Vanilla. Citrus. Cinnamon. Coffee. Apple. Smoke. Pick five and train your nose. You don’t need a £500 bottle to become a better taster.
21. Discover what water actually does to a spirit.
Taste it neat. Add a few drops. Add a little more. Then dilute it further. Notice what appears—and what disappears.
22. Have the same classic cocktail in three very different bars.
Try an Old Fashioned, Martini, Daiquiri or Negroni in a neighbourhood bar, hotel bar and serious cocktail bar. Same recipe on paper. Potentially three completely different drinks.
23. Learn what actually happens inside a cask.
Extraction. Oxidation. Evaporation. Chemical reactions. Previous contents. Wood species. Toasting and charring. Time isn’t the whole story…
24. Compare spirits made from different raw materials.
Barley. Corn. Molasses. Sugarcane juice. Grapes. Agave. Understand how the journey starts before worrying about how it finishes.
25. Taste three spirits from the same category and country blind.
Write your ranking before discovering the brands and prices.
26. Read a book about a drinks category you know almost nothing about.
Tequila. Baijiu. Armagnac. Shochu. Cachaça. Mezcal. Calvados. Expand your drinks map. Want some ideas? Check out the Inside the Cask drinks industry books list and whisky books list.
CONNECTION
27. Buy a drink for someone and ask them to choose the bottle (within reason).
Don’t choose what you think they should drink. Let them choose—and ask them why.
28. Revisit the drink you loved when you first discovered spirits.
The whisky, rum, gin, liqueur or cocktail that started something. See whether nostalgia survives the tasting.
29. Ask a bartender about the best drink they’ve ever had.
Then ask where they had it and who they were with. The story may be better than the drink.
30. Meet someone who actually makes what you drink.
Distiller. Blender. Cooper. Brewer. Grower. Maturation expert. The people behind drinks are usually more interesting than the marketing copy.
LEGENDARY
31. Drink a spirit where it was made.
Scotch in Scotland. Rum in places such as Jamaica or Barbados. Cachaça in Brazil. Cognac in Cognac. Tequila in Jalisco. Place changes perception.
32. Visit a cooperage and watch a cask being made.
Fire, oak, noise, skill and craftsmanship. It’s one of the most fascinating parts of spirits production—and one most drinkers never see.
33. Make the drinks pilgrimage you’ve always talked about.
Islay. Campbeltown. Kentucky. Cognac. Jerez. Jamaica. Brazil. Martinique. Oaxaca. Jalisco. Japan.
Stop saying “one day”.
Book it. Go. Remember it.
SO, HOW CURIOUS ARE YOU?
Give yourself one point for every experience you’ve already completed.
0–5 — Drinks Dabbler
6–12 — Curious Drinker
13–20 — Spirits Explorer
21–27 — Drinks Adventurer
28–32 — Drinks Obsessive
33 — Inside the Cask Legend
THE REAL EXPERIENCE
Don’t count how many bottles you’ve tasted.
Count the places you’ve been, the people you’ve met and the stories you can tell.
Now add your own…
Every curious drinker should have at least one experience on their bucket list that isn’t on ours. What’s yours? Contact me and let me know.
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