Stir like an assassin: five tips for making top-class cocktails at home

There may be an art to crafting cocktails but with quality ingredients, a mean shake and the finest ice you can find, you too can be a mixologist Watching a skilled bartender at work – gracefully moving from backbar to ice well, throwing splashes of liquids into mixing glasses and shaker tins, silently stirring drinks or shaking them with vigour – is part of the pleasure of going to a cocktail bar. But this theatre serves to obscure a fundamental truth about bartending: making a good