Cocktail
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93 free Cocktail trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
10 free Cocktail trivia questions with answers. Cocktail trivia lives in two places on BrainPickle. This page is the shorter set; the main quiz is Cocktails trivia, with our deepest question pool on the topic and a source behind every answer.
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Q 01One theory traces 'cocktail' to coquetier, the French word for which breakfast item, said to have held early New Orleans drinks?
Eggcup
Eggcup: the tale has a New Orleans apothecary serving brandy and bitters in a coquetier until customers mangled the word; dictionaries are unconvinced and still list the origin of 'cocktail' as unknown.
Q 02What is a pre-dinner drink meant to sharpen the appetite called?
Aperitif
Aperitif: the word goes back to the Latin aperire, 'to open', because the drink, usually something dry rather than sweet, is meant to open the appetite for the meal to come.
Q 03What do you call an alcoholic drink served after a meal, rather than before it?
Digestif
Digestif: it is poured at the end of a meal in the old belief that it settles the stomach; the usual choices, sipped neat, are brandies and sweet or bitter herbal liqueurs.
Q 04Antonio Benedetto Carpano is credited with creating the first modern vermouth in the 18th century in which Italian city?
Turin
Turin: Martini & Rossi and other houses grew up in the city in the wake of Carpano's creation, and together they made Turin the centre of the world's vermouth trade.
Q 05A classic margarita is served in a glass whose rim is coated with what?
Salt
Salt: a lime wedge run round the rim makes it stick, and careful bartenders coat only the outside so none falls into the drink; the chilli-lime seasoning Tajín is a common swap.
Q 06Which of these is a common garnish for a classic Martini?
Olive
Olive: the usual choice is a green olive or a twist of lemon peel; ask for the martini 'dirty' and a splash of the olive's brine goes into the glass as well.
Q 07Vermouth, the aromatic partner of gin in a martini, belongs to which category of drink?
Fortified wine
Fortified wine: vermouth is wine strengthened with spirit and steeped with herbs and spices; its name is the German Wermut, wormwood, the plant that gave it its classic bitter edge.
Q 08In the Great Tom Collins Hoax of 1874, pranksters told victims a man in a nearby bar was doing what?
Insulting them
Insulting them: victims stormed off to confront Tom Collins, who did not exist, and newspapers joined in with made-up sightings; a drink of the same name was in Jerry Thomas's bar guide two years later.
Q 09Which carbonated mixer tops a Tom Collins?
Club soda
Club soda: plain fizzy water lengthens the lemon and sugar into a tall cooler; swap the soda for champagne and you have, more or less, a French 75.
Q 10The first printed definition of the cocktail, in an 1806 American newspaper, called it an excellent potion for what?
Electioneering
Electioneering: editor Harry Croswell called the mix of spirits, sugar, water and bitters an excellent electioneering potion, since a person who had swallowed a glass of it was 'ready to swallow any thing else'.
Q 11The Negroni was born around 1919-20 when Count Camillo Negroni asked for what change to his Americano?
Gin instead of soda water
Gin instead of soda water: at Florence's Caffè Casoni, bartender Fosco Scarselli is said to have stiffened the Count's Americano by swapping its soda for gin, keeping the Campari and sweet vermouth.
Q 12When making a mojito, how should the mint leaves be treated?
Gently bruised, not shredded
Gently bruised, not shredded: a light press releases the mint's fragrant oils, while over-muddling lets out bitter flavours and leaves a gritty, muted drink.
Q 13The IBA recipe for a Manhattan calls for a dash of which bitters?
Q 21Jerry Thomas, author of America's first cocktail book, was known by which nickname?
Professor
Professor: Thomas was a showman who juggled bottles as he mixed and dripped with diamonds; his 1862 How to Mix Drinks set down recipes that until then had been passed on by word of mouth.
Q 22What was the flaming signature drink of Jerry Thomas, first mixed at the El Dorado saloon in Gold Rush San Francisco?
The Blue Blazer
The Blue Blazer: Thomas set whisky alight and poured it back and forth between two mugs in a long arc of blue flame; the story goes that he invented it for a gold miner who demanded 'some hell-fire'.
Q 23A martini garnished with a pickled cocktail onion is called what?
A Gibson
Angostura
Angostura: a dash seasons the rye and sweet vermouth; the famous tale that the drink was invented at a banquet thrown by Winston Churchill's mother is a myth, since she was abroad and pregnant at the time.
Q 14The daiquiri is usually credited to Jennings Cox, an American of what profession working in Cuba around 1898?
Mining engineer
Mining engineer: Cox ran American iron-mining operations at the village of Daiquirí near Santiago de Cuba, whose Taíno-derived name the rum, lime and sugar drink took.
Q 15A Bloody Mary made with gin instead of vodka goes by what name?
Red Snapper
Red Snapper: the gin-based version; the name was reportedly adopted at a New York hotel bar in the 1930s because 'Bloody Mary' sounded too coarse for its clientele.
Q 16The name piña colada literally means what in Spanish?
Strained pineapple
Strained pineapple: colada is Spanish for strained, a nod to the freshly pressed and sieved juice the drink should be made with; Rupert Holmes took the name to number one in 1979 with 'Escape (The Piña Colada Song)'.
Q 17The cosmopolitan is made with vodka, cranberry juice, lime juice and which orange liqueur?
Cointreau
Cointreau: bartender Toby Cecchini rebuilt a rough pink bar drink around it and fresh lime juice at the Odeon restaurant in the late 1980s, and the IBA's official recipe still names the brand.
Q 18A Moscow mule of vodka, ginger beer and lime is properly served in a mug made of what?
Copper
Copper: the drink was a 1940s scheme to shift slow sellers, Smirnoff vodka and a Hollywood pub's ginger beer; its promoter then toured bars photographing bartenders with the mug, which made it the drink's badge.
Q 19'Trader Vic' Bergeron claimed to have invented the Mai Tai in 1944 at his bar in which city?
Oakland
Oakland: Bergeron said he mixed it at his Trader Vic's restaurant for friends visiting from Tahiti, one of whom cried 'Maita'i roa ae!', roughly 'out of this world', which gave the drink its name.
Q 20The Sazerac, sometimes called the oldest American cocktail, is named after a brand of what?
Cognac
Cognac: the Sazerac Coffee House in New Orleans took its name, and its house drink, from the Sazerac-de-Forge et Fils brandy it sold; the bar is thought to have switched to rye when a vine pest wrecked French vineyards in the 1870s.
A Gibson: nobody knows when the onion arrived, as the earliest recipes had none; one story credits Walter Gibson, a San Francisco businessman, in the 1890s, another the illustrator Charles Dana Gibson.
Q 24In one origin story, the Martinez was mixed at San Francisco's Occidental Hotel for travellers about to catch what?
An evening ferry
An evening ferry: the boat ran to the nearby town of Martinez, which tells a rival story of its own, that a barman in one of its saloons invented the drink.
Q 25The Singapore Sling was reputedly created around 1915 at the Long Bar of which establishment?
Raffles
Raffles: barman Ngiam Tong Boon is credited with the pink gin sling at the hotel's Long Bar, where by long custom guests still brush their peanut shells onto the floor.
Q 26Venice bar owner Giuseppe Cipriani named the Bellini after a 15th-century painter because of the drink's what?
Pink colour
Pink colour: the blush of white-peach purée in prosecco reminded Cipriani of the pink in a Giovanni Bellini painting; it began as a seasonal special, served only while the peaches were ripe.
Q 27The mint julep is famously the symbol of which sporting event?
The Kentucky Derby
The Kentucky Derby: Churchill Downs has promoted the julep as the race's drink since 1938 and is said to pour some 120,000 of them over Derby weekend, nearly all in souvenir glasses.
Q 28Which bitter red liqueur, created in Venice in 1920, is commonly poured in a Venetian spritz?
Select
Select: the Pilla brothers' distillery launched it in Venice in 1920 and it is still commonly poured in the city's spritz, even though the IBA's official recipe for the drink names Aperol instead.
Q 29Which London bartender is credited with creating the espresso martini in the 1980s?
Dick Bradsell
Dick Bradsell: he shook vodka, fresh espresso, coffee liqueur and sugar at London's Soho Brasserie around 1983, reputedly for a customer who asked for a drink to wake her up.
Q 30A Long Island iced tea contains no tea, so which mixer gives the drink its tea-like colour?
Cola
Cola: just a splash tints the mix of vodka, gin, rum, tequila and triple sec the colour of iced tea; Robert 'Rosebud' Butt says he invented it for a 1972 contest at a Long Island inn, a claim a Tennessee town disputes.