Here, 15 easy-to-make recipes that spotlight the versatile spirit, beyond the classic Margarita.

Here are our favorite easy ways to use amaro.

We asked about mentorship, how to extend hospitality to both guests and fellow bartenders, and our panelists’ hopes and dreams for the future. Here are some of the highlights from our conversations.

Start simple. “There are so many resources that weren’t available when I first started out. Now there’s probably a YouTube video or an article about pretty much anything and everything. But with there being so much information out there, I think new bartenders today want to get to the most exciting stuff. They kind of skip over some of the steps with learning the basics… I think learning the building blocks of cocktails before you just jump right in and get started is really important.” —Lily Wang, partner at Nine Bar and Cara Cara Club in Chicago

Put yourself out there. “Show up for stuff. It doesn’t just have to be a competition. It could be an educational [opportunity], it could be a brand thing, it could be a seminar, it could be your friend’s pop-up. But show up, put yourself in the room, give other people the opportunity to meet you and get to know you.” —Izzy Tulloch, founder of A Bar Called Pancakes in New York City

You don’t need to be a mixologist. “Don’t feel like there’s this massive barrier to entry. It’s not like you have to have all the equipment… As great as it is for your craft to learn how to take it to the next level with molecular gastronomy, you don’t need to… Bartending is an art because we all have different styles and that’s really the most beautiful thing about it.” —Jenna “Duckie” Reynolds, bartender at Hermanita in Charlotte, North Carolina

Learn to take feedback. “Developing an ability for critical self-evaluation is really important when you’re starting up. This doesn’t mean you need to put yourself down, but you do need to develop an ability to look at your skill set and look at how you perform, shift to shift, and be honest about the pitfalls. If you struggle with that, you need to become much more open to feedback from your peers and your direct superiors.” —Daniel Villa, beverage director for R+D at Thai Taste in Charlotte, North Carolina

Understand the business. “If you want to progress—or even if you just want to bartend forever—knowing the business, knowing how to make a bar profitable, and how to cost your cocktails is important. [Say] you want to put a new cocktail on, it’ll be much easier to get that cocktail on the menu if you say [to your manager], ‘I got this idea for a cocktail. I costed it out. It’s only going to cost us this amount, and the prep is easy… The farther you go up [in management], it’s honestly less about creativity and more about reading a P&L, making sure your beverage cost is correct, managing a team, and things like that… When you go into beverage director or bar manager interviews, they’re going to be interested in that.” —Devin Kennedy, partner at Press Club in D.C. and Best New Bartender alum

Be thoughtful about who to ask for mentorship. “I’m a big fan of mentorship… When you’re looking for a mentor, it’s important to find somebody who you sync with. It could just be your approach to cocktails, your approach to business, your approach to back-of-house machinations. Whatever it is, it has to be that you share a bit of the same philosophy, and I feel like that’s when it can be most fruitful for everybody.” —Erick Castro, co-owner of Raised by Wolves and Gilly’s House of Cocktails in San Diego

Listed below are this year’s final nominees. We were impressed and inspired by their drinks, their creativity, their passion and their commitment to their communities. We received a record number of submissions and are so grateful to everyone who nominated themselves and their peers.

Please join us in celebrating the final nominees, and check back in June, when we will name the 10 Best New Bartenders of 2026.

Miley Aryucharoen | Tomat, Los Angeles, California
Carley Callis | Paloma Restaurant and Copita Wine Bar, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Kayla Campbell | Courtland Club, Providence, Rhode Island
Christy Cartagena | Sparrow, Chicago, Illinois
Matthew Huntley | Three Dots and a Dash, Chicago, Illinois
Abigail Jennings | Father Forgive Me, Detroit, Michigan
Princess Johnson | Allegory, Washington, D.C.
Chris Kuse | Monstera Mezcaleria & Natural Wines, St. Louis, Missouri
Sid Lewis | Occidental Bar, Denver, Colorado
Laurymar Lopez Melon | Bar Snack, New York, New York
Lena Maio | Beatbox, New York, New York
Nicole Nathan | Viridian, Oakland, California
Jakob McCabe-Johnston | Kimball House, Decatur, Georgia
Dominique Muñoz | Polite Provisions, San Diego, California
Kristine Nguyen | Bludorn, Houston, Texas
Dillon Raaz | Atoma, Seattle, Washington
Samantha Ruth | Darling, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Nicolette Shea Irvine | The Paddock, Eugene, Oregon
Sean Teague | Rada, Charlotte, North Carolina
Lucy Mae Valenti | Residents, Washington, D.C.

Of all the names for mixed drinks—cocktails, slings, daisies, mules—the word “julep” claims the oldest heritage. Etymologically, it derives from the Persian gulab, a medicinal mixture of violets, water and sugar that traces its history back more than a millennium. Even in the 17th century, when spirits (brandy, rum and gin) were added to the base recipe, the julep was still considered remedial. It wasn’t uncommon for juleps to be prescribed by doctors in attempts to heal ailing patients; created in the 19th century, the Prescription Julep, a classic variation of the drink, nods to these medicinal origins. 

In the late 18th century, the julep transformed, perplexingly, into a morning beverage not unlike coffee, designed to help early risers face the day. But it was not until the 1810s, with the advent of the American ice industry, that the julep would become an iconic summertime cocktail. Mint became the drink’s calling card, and several decades later, whiskey would surpass brandy, gin and rum as the base spirit of choice. Still, variations made with other spirits abound, like the Champagne Julep (which calls for Cognac and dry sparkling wine) and the Dabney (which is built on a mix of amari and rum).

Other modern interpretations call for lowering the proof, introducing modifiers like golden pineapple syrup and even mashing up the classic with tropical staples like the swizzle. Its enduring legacy is proof that the 19th-century template continues to be an inspiration, even into the 21st century. Here are some of our favorite takes on the template.

The idea isn’t exactly new; Fanny Chu’s Dirty Martini Highball has been a reader-favorite recipe on Punch for years, and I’ve come across olive lemonades and dirty spritzes, too. But I must confess that I’m not typically a dirty Martini drinker (sue me! I like it classic and with a twist!), so I’d never considered myself a devotee. 

Recently, though, at the new-school pub Dean’s, I didn’t realize that the house G&T would follow a similar template. I was pleasantly surprised at the saltiness and the more subtle brininess of the drink. As I slurped oysters and let the cool spring breeze waft through the windows and over me, I thought, if not for the passing taxis and tourists of the West Village, I could imagine myself lounging seaside. And whether you load your Martinis with olives or not, I think you could get behind this drink, too.

Though McGee found the Pago Pago through Jeff Berry’s work, the drink is credited to the Ronrico rum brand circa 1940. That same year, the cocktail appeared in the second edition of Hyman Gale and Gerald F. Marco’s The How and When, which was published in Chicago by a chain of high-end liquor stores. “I loved at the time that it had a Chicago connection,” McGee says. This edition featured a robust tropical drinks addendum with nearly two dozen recipes ripped from Ronrico marketing materials.

The U.S. imperialist ethos of the period, and of tiki culture, is written right into the Pago Pago’s very name: It’s the capital of American Samoa, which was colonized in 1900, and, though the Pago Pago’s origins don’t lie in the early tiki bars of the period, McGee sees some of the hallmarks of that genre in it. “This could be a Donn the Beachcomber drink,” he says. “He’s best known for using dual citrus and layering a lot of different flavors.” Perhaps it’s this quality—and the inclusion of industry-favorite Chartreuse—that explains why it’s been retroactively subsumed into the tiki canon by 21st-century bartenders. 

Originally, the recipe called for Ronrico’s “Red” expression, a 90-proof, dark, heavy-bodied rum. For his first iteration of the drink, McGee’s Pago Pago called for a four-year Flor de Caña gold rum from Nicaragua, a brand popular with tropical bartenders at the time that features a lighter body and a fairly neutral, vanilla-forward profile. Since then, he’s used a variety of rums, including a combination of Probitas and Transcontinental Rum Line’s High Seas blend. His current favorite to use is Worthy Park Silver, an unaged Jamaican rum.

His choice of crème de cacao has changed, too. He started out with Marie Brizard, which has a lighter, sweeter profile, and nowadays he favors Tempus Fugit’s rich, vanilla-laced liqueur that offers a deeper chocolate flavor.