A guide to the flavour tags

Every cocktail in the catalogue carries a handful of tags. They are not scores, and they are not a shorthand for the recipe. They are a rough description: what the drink smells of, how it feels on the first sip, what the tongue picks up, what colour sits in the glass, and what kind of serve it is. A tag records only a prominent trait, so a drink that is not tagged sour is not necessarily free of acidity — it simply is not what you notice first.

The search page groups the tags into five categories, in this order: aroma, body, taste, colour and style. Aroma, body and taste allow two selections each; colour and style allow one. Every condition is an and: two tags in one category means a drink must carry both, and a second category narrows that set further. Tags can also be written straight into the address, as in /cocktails/search?taste=酸. One thing to know: the keyword box and the tags are mutually exclusive — type a keyword and the selected tags are set aside.

The tags themselves are written in Chinese throughout the site, so each one below is given with an English gloss and a link that runs the search for it. Two words live in two categories at once: 草本 (herbal) and 辛香料 (spice). Under aroma they describe what the nose meets first; under taste, what stays on the tongue. Their search parameters differ accordingly (?smell=草本 and ?taste=草本).

Aroma

The nose reaches the glass before the tongue does. This category is about that first impression.

• 花香 — floral: rose, violet or elderflower notes, usually from a liqueur or a sparkling wine, fine rather than sugary. The Casino and the French 75 are the two in the catalogue.
• 果香 — fruity: fruit other than citrus — peach, pineapple, apricot, apple, berries. The largest aroma tag, carried by twenty-one drinks including the Bellini and the Sea Breeze.
• 麥香 — malty: toasted grain and malt, which survives only where whisky is not buried under juice. The Boulevardier is the clearest case here.
• 木質 — woody: dry oak and vanilla left by barrel ageing, the easiest signature of an aged spirit to recognise. See the Old Fashioned and the Negroni.
• 奶香 — creamy: cream, milk, cacao or egg, which smells closer to dessert than most cocktails do. The Alexander and the Grasshopper are typical.
• 咖啡 — coffee: roasted coffee from beans or from a coffee liqueur, usually with a cocoa-like bitterness behind it. Only the Black Russian and the Espresso Martini carry it.
• 草本 — herbal: herbs and botanical infusions, whether from vermouth, a herbal liqueur or a handful of fresh mint. The Dry Martini smells of vermouth; the Mojito smells of mint.
• 辛香料 — spice: dry spice — pepper, cinnamon, clove, celery salt. The Bloody Mary is the only drink tagged with it.

Body

Weight and movement in the mouth, independent of flavour. Imagine the first sip.

• 清爽 — crisp: light-bodied and clean-finishing, usually because acidity, ice or dilution keeps the drink open. The most common body tag, on twenty-three drinks.
• 酒感 — spirit-forward: the spirit is plainly present, generally because the recipe is spirits and fortified wine with nothing soft to stretch it. The Dry Martini and the Old Fashioned define it.
• 氣泡 — sparkling: topped with soda, tonic, cola or sparkling wine, so the drink arrives with a prickle. The Gin Tonic and the Gin Fizz belong here.
• 濃郁 — rich: thick and concentrated, typical of cream, egg, liqueur-led or undiluted builds, as in the Grasshopper and the Espresso Martini.

Taste

What the tongue actually registers. The first five are basic tastes; the last four point at a source.

• 酸 — sour: lemon, lime or other acidity as a structural part of the drink — the backbone of the whole sour family. Twenty drinks carry it.
• 甜 — sweet: sugar from syrup, liqueur or juice. The most frequent tag anywhere in the vocabulary, on thirty-three drinks, though it rarely stands alone: sourness or bitterness is usually tagged alongside it.
• 苦 — bitter: the finish left by bitters, a bitter liqueur or coffee, holding the sugar down. The Negroni and the Americano are the plainest examples.
• 辣 — hot: heat from chilli or hot sauce, which is not the same sensation as alcohol. Only the Bloody Mary and the Vampiro are tagged.
• 鹹 — salty: salt, olive brine or tomato juice, generally used to draw out the other flavours, as in the Dirty Martini.
• 莓果 — berry: cranberry, raspberry or blackberry, which usually turns the drink red at the same time. The Cosmopolitan and the Clover Club carry it.
• 柑橘 — citrus: orange, grapefruit, orange liqueur or the oil from a citrus peel. It is not the same as sour: the Screwdriver is tagged citrus and not sour.
• 草本 — herbal: the faint bitterness and lingering sweetness that herbs leave on the tongue. Six drinks carry the herbal tag in both categories — the Negroni, the Mojito and the Dry Martini among them — smelled first, then tasted.
• 辛香料 — spice: dry spice in the mouth, recorded separately from hot, because spice need not burn. As with the aroma tag, the Bloody Mary is so far the only one.

Colour

What the liquid looks like. Only one colour can be selected at a time.

• 綠色 — green: crème de menthe, melon liqueur, or blue curaçao meeting lemon juice, at any depth of shade. See the Grasshopper and the King's Valley.
• 紅色 — red: tomato, cranberry, grenadine or a bitter liqueur, pink shades included. The Bloody Mary and the Manhattan are both here.
• 黃色 — yellow: pale gold to bright yellow, from lemon juice, orange juice or a yellow liqueur, as in the Sidecar and the Screwdriver.
• 無色 — clear: transparent, with the ice or the olive visible through it. The Dry Martini and the Gin Tonic belong here.
• 白色 — white: opaque and cloudy, usually from shaken citrus juice, egg white, cream or coconut. The Daiquiri and the Pina Colada look nothing like a clear drink.
• 橘色 — orange: the band between red and yellow, generally from a bitter liqueur, an orange liqueur or peach, as in the Negroni and the Mai-tai.
• 茶色 — amber: amber through to deep brown — aged spirits, cola, coffee liqueur, port. The Long Island Iced Tea and the Black Russian are examples.
• 紫色 — purple: violet liqueur or dark berries. The Aviation is the only one in the catalogue.
• 漸層 — gradient: not a colour but a state. The drink is not mixed through, so bands of colour sit one above another, either floated deliberately or left by syrup settling. The B52 and the Tequila Sunrise are tagged this way.

Style

Volume and format, also one selection at a time.

• 長飲 — long drink: served in a highball or collins glass over ice and lengthened with soda or juice, so it is larger and warms slowly. Thirty-seven drinks are long.
• 短飲 — short drink: a small serve with little or no ice, concentrated in flavour, typically in a cocktail or coupe glass. Forty-six drinks are short.
• shot: the smallest format, finished in one from a small glass. The rarest style here: only the B52.

Combining filters

Tags earn their keep in combination. Herbal aroma with a bitter taste leaves the Americano and the Negroni; crisp and sparkling is a set of seven; sour, sweet and cloudy white narrows to two. Several tags in one category are separated by a comma in the address; different categories are joined with &.

When a search comes back empty, drop the condition you added last. The tags describe the few traits that stand out in a glass, not the whole of it, and an intersection drawn too tightly tends to filter out the drink you were looking for first.