Cocktail Flight Ideas: Six Boards, Real Pour Sizes and the Alcohol Math

A bachelorette party once asked me for four kinds of Margarita and I was young enough to pour each of them four full drinks. Nobody finished the third glass. The bride went home before the cake came out.

A drink flight is four small pours of one idea on one board. Small is the part people skip, so I run one rule now.

One full recipe, three glasses. Shake or stir the drink at normal size. Then split it across three little glasses. With the ice melt each one lands between 1.25 and 2 oz. Four recipes for three people comes to about one and a third cocktails per person, spread over four tastes.

Don’t try to build each tiny pour on its own. A shaker tin will turn an ounce of liquid into a cold spoonful of water. And three-eighths of an ounce is not a measurement anybody should attempt at a party.

Tequila four ways

My favorite way to show someone what blanco tequila can do is to use one bottle for all four glasses. Run them left to right in this order.

Watch people at glasses two and three. The tequila and lime stay put while agave goes up against Cointreau. Everybody at the table picks a side out loud.

Squeeze your limes that day and shake to order. That’s four rounds of shaking for one board. Grab a friend.

The Campari ladder

I pour this for people who swear they hate Campari. It’s in all four glasses. By the third one they’ve usually stopped complaining.

Start low with the Negroni Sbagliato, an ounce each of sweet vermouth, Campari and sparkling white wine. The Old Pal comes next with equal parts rye, Campari and dry vermouth. Bone dry, and it bites. Third is the Boulevardier, 1 1/2 oz bourbon against an ounce each of Campari and sweet vermouth, which is where the table goes quiet. Finish on the Negroni. The spec we list leans hard on gin at 2 oz, with 1 oz Campari and 1/2 oz sweet vermouth.

Hate shaking? Pick this board. Stir your batches the morning of the party, add the water, and keep them in the fridge. We have notes on how long batched cocktails last if you need the numbers. Wine for the Sbagliato goes in at the last second. When somebody falls for the whole ladder, hand them our Negroni variations and walk away.

One classic and its family

You can do this with any old drink that has relatives. I always reach for the Manhattan.

Careful, though, because these specs run short. A Manhattan here is 1 1/2 oz blended whiskey, 1/4 oz sweet vermouth and a dash of Angostura. Split that three ways and you’ve poured a thimble, so I break my own rule and use two glasses per recipe. You get a little over an ounce in each. That’s plenty when it’s nearly all whiskey.

The Perfect Manhattan adds dry vermouth with no amount given, and I use 1/4 oz. Next comes the Brooklyn with 1 oz rye, 3/4 oz rosso vermouth and 2 to 3 dashes of maraschino. A Rob Roy closes it out on 1 1/2 oz Scotch and 3/4 oz sweet vermouth.

Freeze the glasses for this one. An ounce of warm Manhattan tastes like cough syrup and I’ve sent enough of them out to know.

Bubbles for brunch

Forget the splitting rule here too. Build these right in the glass at two ounces each and carry them out fast, since a pour that small goes flat in a hurry. One 750 ml bottle will cover four guests with a splash left for the cook.

• Mimosa: 1 oz orange juice and 1 oz Champagne.
• Bellini: peach puree and Prosecco. No amounts on this one, so I go 1/2 oz puree and 1 1/2 oz wine.
• Kir Royale: one part creme de cassis to five parts Champagne, which works out to about 1/3 oz and a fat 1 1/2 oz.
• French 75: take the full 1 oz gin, 1 oz simple syrup and 4 oz Champagne and divide it by three. Lemon on top.

An afternoon board

Sherry drinks almost never got ordered at my bar. I’d pour them for the staff after a double and those bottles went fast. This is the lightest cocktail flight here by a wide margin.

Put the Bamboo and the Adonis side by side. Both run 1 1/2 oz sherry to 1 1/2 oz vermouth. Amontillado and dry vermouth make the Bamboo, with 2 dashes of orange bitters and one of regular. Dry oloroso and sweet vermouth make the Adonis, and it drinks darker. The Americano gets an ounce each of sweet vermouth and Campari plus lemon and orange twists. I’d add a splash of soda. A Sherry Cobbler goes last with 3 oz sherry, 2 oz soda, 1/4 oz sugar syrup and 1/3 oz triple sec. Back to three glasses per recipe.

Open a fresh bottle of vermouth. With this little booze there’s nowhere for a stale one to hide.

An easy cocktail flight

No shaker and no limes on this one. Pour 3/4 oz of spirit in each glass and scale the rest from there. Keep everything cold in the fridge until it’s time.

• Gin and Tonic. One part each, as written. Stiff, but it’s a small glass.
• Greyhound. Three parts grapefruit juice to two parts vodka. Carton juice is fine.
• Dark ’n Stormy. Black Seal rum with twice as much ginger beer.
• Black Russian. 3/4 oz vodka and 1/2 oz coffee liqueur. It goes last since it’s the sweet one.

If a board needs a bottle you don’t own, put your shelf into Cocktail Builder and swap in something you can already make.

Count the alcohol

People see tiny glasses and stop counting. A US standard drink is 0.6 oz of pure alcohol, which is about what’s in 1.5 oz of 80-proof liquor. Per guest, poured the way I’ve laid out, the boards come to this.

Those are estimates. I figured 40% for spirits and Cointreau, 24% for Campari, 17% for vermouth and sherry, 12% for wine and 20% for coffee liqueur, and your labels may say otherwise.

My budget is one board per person, which means four glasses and no second round. I put a water glass on every board and food within reach.

As for the board itself, a cutting board does the job. Grab small glasses from whatever bar glassware you own and write the names on masking tape. Those drilled wooden planks can cost more than the tequila.

Last modified on November 1, 2026