Herbal Cocktails
Explore 309 Herbal cocktail recipes.
Herbal cocktails pull their character from green ingredients — fresh mint, basil, dill, thyme — and from the herbal liqueurs and amari that compress those notes into a single ingredient. The Mojito sits at the simple end of the family: white rum, lime, sugar, fresh mint, and soda, with the mint doing as much aromatic work as the spirit. The Negroni works the opposite direction, the herbal load coming from Campari and sweet vermouth rather than fresh leaves, the gin's juniper backbone keeping the structure tall.
Gin and Tonic is the most casual entry on the list and the most surprising — the tonic's quinine and the gin's botanicals are doing the herbal lifting, even though nothing about the build feels herbal in the obvious way. The Paper Plane and Naked & Famous both lean on Aperol or yellow Chartreuse for the herbal kick, balanced against citrus and bourbon or mezcal underneath. The Sazerac brings rye, absinthe and Peychaud's, the herbal layer coming from the absinthe rinse and the anise-leaning bitters.
Across the list the technique varies — shaken, stirred, built in glass — but the throughline is that the herb (whether fresh or distilled) is doing flavour-defining work, not just dressing. Most reward the better bottle. Most reward fresh leaves.
Most do better stirred over big ice than shaken over small.
Top Herbal cocktails
Mojito
White rum, Lime juice, Soda water, Mint leaves, Sugar
Ultima Palabra
Mezcal, Green Chartreuse, Lime juice, Pineapple juice, Water, Maraschino cherry
Aunt Roberta
Brandy, Vodka, Absinthe, Gin, Blackberry liqueur
Champs-Élysées
Cognac, Green Chartreuse, Sugar / simple syrup, Aromatic bitters, Lemon juice
The Perfect Martini
Gin, Red vermouth, Olive juice
Mucho Grande
Tequila blanco, Aperol, Amaro, Orange juice, Lemon juice, Caramel syrup, Egg
Absinthe Drip
Absinthe, Sugar, Water
Coffee Cardamom & Orange
Coffee liqueur, Jugo de naranja, Vainas de cardamomo