Need a gift for your favorite bartender at your local bar? Or a gift idea for a friend or family member who tends bar as a career? We’re here to help with our gift guide.
Foraging is a great way to take your cocktails to the next level. A foraged cocktail has unusual ingredients that you may not be able to pick up at your local liquor store or grocery store. This cocktail guidebook includes 40 new recipes featuring wild berries, herbs, and flowers.
The book is divided into seasonal sections, and includes seasonal advice on how find the best raw ingredients in the forests and fields near you. If you want to help your favorite bartender incorporate new ingredients into their drinks, this book will definitely inspire them.
Waterstone Creations takes vintage dictionaries in poor condition and upcycles them into works of art. This handmade print features a famous Mark Twain quote: “Too much of anything is bad, but too much whiskey is barely enough.” This print measures approximately 8×11 inches. This would look great in their home, or behind the bar where they work.
These beautiful rocks glasses are perfect for drinking whisky or bourbon. These glasses hold 11 ounces of liquid, and measure about 3.5 inches tall.
Each glass features an original illustration of a forest landscape with a tent and campfire on it. The heavy bottom design makes these a pleasure to hold, and ideal for those who don’t like overly delicate glassware.
If your favorite bartender likes to wind down at the end of the night with a wee dram, this is a great gift idea. If this style isn’t really to their taste, consider these Game of Thrones-inspired rocks glasses.
Not all breathalyzers are created equal. This model from BACtrack is one of the most well-reviewed and respected in the country. It’s backed by a one-year warranty, plus a 30-day money back guarantee. It uses the same technology as police-grade breathalyzers, and it’s backed by support from the U.S. Dept. of Transportation & National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. It’s easy to use, making it ideal for testing inebriated people. Encourage safe drinking with this thoughtful, useful gift.
Looking for a cheaper alternative? Consider the BACtrack Vio, which retails for around $50. It’s more compact than the S80, and syncs with a wide variety of iOS and Android devices.
Champagne is more fun when you’re drinking it with a companion. This cool set of toasting flutes makes a lovely display when not in use. Simply fill the flutes with your favorite sparkling wine, and lift the glasses gently from the cradle.
These glasses are perfect for a romantic night in, or for tasting two different sparkling wines. The glasses are suitable for engraving, if you’d like to make your gift seem more personal. If the bartender you’re shopping for already has too many Champagne flutes, consider this attractive lead-free crystal decanter instead.
When you’re a bartender, you get a lot of glassware as gifts from well-meaning friends and relatives. After a while, your home has almost as many glasses as your bar. Enter these handmade swizzle sticks, which are much less likely to be a redundant gift than yet another set of highball glasses.
This set of six swizzle sticks are great for mixing drinks, and they also make it easy to tell who is drinking from which glass, thanks to their distinctive colors. These little sticks are great for any bartender who likes to entertain at home. Trust us…nobody else will think to get your favorite bartender a set of handmade glass swizzle sticks.
Does your favorite bartender resort to keeping their alcohol in a dusty kitchen cabinet? Elevate their entertaining game with a bar cart, which lets the bartender and their guests see everything that’s on offer. This classy bar cart has an oak finish, and wheels on casters for ease of movement.
The top section is ideal for showcasing a bottle of wine, glasses, and some decanters, or you could use the whole top section for snacks and apps, and keep the booze on the bottom shelf. All sides of the bar cart are finished, so it looks good no matter which direction it is facing.
These agate coasters are an upscale way to decorate a space and keep your drinks from leaving rings on your coffee table. Because they’re made from a natural material, they do vary slightly in size and appearance. You can expect each coaster to measure between 3.5 and four inches.
If you know a bartender who loves gems and geology, this will likely appeal to them. Looking for something with a little more personality? We’re also big fans of this someecards coaster set, which features the signature potty-mouth style that someecards is famous for.
This fun candle comes in a martini glass, making it perfect for the bartender who likes to take their work home with them. Each candle is clean burning, made from natural ingredients, and the warmed wax can also be used as a warm body lotion. These candles are handmade in Chicago, making them an especially nice gift for any Chicago native. Other martini candle options include chocolate and lavender, quince, or sweet vanilla cupcake.
This funny shirt is perfect for your favorite bartender, but we especially like the ideal of giving this to a brother, sister, or best friend who tends bar. You know, the kind of person you have a close enough relationship with where this shirt wouldn’t offend them.
This shirt is available in both men’s and women’s sizes, in colors like black, brown, blue, green, and dark heather grey.
If you know a bartender who loves camping or tailgating, this fun gadget allows them to take the party wherever they go. This combination cooler and Bluetooth speaker provides hours of entertainment.
If you know your favorite bartender is constantly experimenting to create new drinks, this cocktail journal provides them a place to take notes about their latest creations. The pages are blank, providing ample room to write notes, draw diagrams, or even conceptualize how the finished drink will be presented in glass with a garnish. The endpapers feature beautiful cocktail imagery that will inspire them.
Any bartender worth their salt experiments with their own unique fruit or botanical infusions. This handy kit has all the materials they need to get started with a new batch of experimental booze.
After a long night of making drinks for other people, your favorite bartender deserves a nightcap. But at the end of the day, sometimes making one last cocktail just seems like too much work. Enter these flavorful cocktail mixers, which will allow them to make a complex cocktail as simply as possible.
This set includes a bottle of cherry almond mixer, vanilla ginger mixer, grapefruit & basil mixer, and maple-cinnamon mixer. Simply combine 1 part of the mixer syrup with 2 parts alcohol and soda water or juice to taste.
These mixology dice are a great way to get exposure to a wide variety of mixing techniques without having to go one at a time through a bartending recipe book. With a die each for spirit, sugar, liqueur, citrus, fruit, herb, spice, and bitters, this set covers the full spectrum of ingredient options. Fun for parties, whether during the holidays or a night of cocktails in the summer.
My brother is an executive chef and he uses his own set of knives at work. The bartender in your life could make use of their own tools, as well, and among them should be this swank muddler. It doubles as an ice crusher and has a nice grip for ease of use.
Bitters are the (not-so-) secret ingredient to a lot of very fine cocktails. Give your favorite bartender a number of options with these high-quality bitters handemade in Seattle. Flavors include orange, aromatic, Orleans, celery, lavender, chocolate, cardamom and grapefruit.
Here’s a classy print for home or bar that celebrates one of the classics. If this one doesn’t strike your fancy, there’s a vodka soda variant or a gin and tonic one.
Opened just over a decade ago, Death & Co is the hugely influential craft cocktail bar that began in New York’s East Village. This 320 page tome includes not only 500 modern cocktail recipes, but also information on the very nature of mixology and rich photography. When they get through this book, try Cocktail Codex from the same folks.
This large print breaks down the constituent ingredients of 60 classic cocktails. The bartender you give this to will be unlikely to need this as a reference, but it makes a fetching addition to any environment.
Bartenders go through their fair share of bar towels. These classic blue stripe towels are more than up to the task of keeping the bar clean and dry, whether they’re at work or at home.
Like a SodaStream, but for mixology, this system will let you carbonate just about any liquid you might want to add to a beverage. This will let you add a little effervescence to drinks that don’t call for tonic or soda, and can also be used to add bubbles back to Champagne or sparkling wines. This is the home version, and you can get a bundle with three shakers here.
