This is part of Wet February, a series about America’s increasingly muddled relationship with drinking—and how to sip your way through it wisely and well. I’ve had the same encounter multiple times, but I remember one instance vividly. I had finally spotted a canned version of the Penicillin cocktail, by the brand Tip Top, on the counter at my local wine shop. “I’ve been looking for this one,” I told the store clerk. It had been sold out on Tip Top’s website ever since it was released. “Have you tried it?” “No, I don’t really do canned cocktails,” the clerk said. “If I want a cocktail, I just make one.” I’ve heard this refrain again and again from wine-shop folks and bartenders whose bars stock canned or “RTD” (ready to drink) cocktails, in industry parlance. I also love to mix my own cocktails, but honestly, the Penicillin—a modern classic created by New York bartender Sam Ross in 2005—is a pain in the ass to make at home. You need to make honey-ginger syrup, you need candied ginger, you need two different kinds of scotch. I don’t tend to stock those things. I appealed to the clerk’s sense of reason: Why wouldn’t you want to have this perfect drink at home without $100 in overhead? Besides, I said, “Sam Ross himself partnered…
Published: February 7, 2026 4:00 pm
Source: Slate — Read original