Since 2016, we’ve set the lofty aim of discovering the last word expression of each basic cocktail. After asking dozens of America’s finest bartenders to submit their best recipes for Rob Roys, Jungle Birds, Martinis and past, we blind tasted all of them with a panel of specialists to crown a winner. Searching for the platonic best, we’ve found that some first place winners strictly adhere to conventional recipes (the case for the Manhattan and the Bamboo), whereas others look to unorthodox and probably controversial strategies—reminiscent of orange juice in a Whiskey Bitter or a Negroni that forgoes an equal components development. Right here, we’ve rounded up one of the best of one of the best basic cocktail recipes.