Good drinks tell a story, and this is the story of those drinks. Each week, we'll be serving up a remedial cocktail lesson for bartending beginners to help you get the most out of your glass, with recipes, interviews, and histories coming right up.

Last week we had Manhattans, but New York doesn't end at the borders of that island and neither do its cocktails. Although the Manhattan is surely the Manhattan of drinks named for New York City — both the best known and most frequently requested — a jaunt to some other boroughs can be taken simply in tippling the following drinks.

The Bronx Cocktail
Adapted from World Drinks and How To Mix Them (1908) by William T. "Bill" Boothby

1 oz gin
1 oz French vermouth
1oz Italian vermouth
2 dashes orange bitters
Spoonful of orange juice
Squeeze of orange peel

Shake well with cracked ice; strain and serve.

Though the Bronx cocktail may include orange juice, it's of course not recommended for (most) mornings, and in fact as the drink was fully popularized by 1910 it precedes OJ's place at the breakfast table. Basically a Perfect Martini with a fruit juice addition, it's great for warm days and evenings and isn't particularly strong, which is a strength in itself if you're one for sessionable cocktails.

The Brooklyn Cocktail:
Adapted from the Savoy Cocktail Book (1930) by Harry Craddock

2 oz rye
¾ oz dry vermouth
¼ oz Luxardo maraschino liqueur
¼ oz Amer Picon

Stir, strain, no garnish.

Unlike its namesake borough, the Brooklyn cocktail never quite caught on. Though it was included in the legendary Savoy Cocktail Book, the elixir fell into almost total obscurity until the 1990s. The French aperitif Amer Picon is the big addition here, probably introduced in 1908, as it was published that way in Jack's Manual of Recipes for Fancy Mixed Drinks and How to Serve Them, a book from J. A. Grohusko. Embarrassingly, in 1916, according to a story from historian David Wondrich, the president of the Brooklyn Press Club was caught by a local paper asking a waiter: “Bring me a Bronx cocktail. No, make it a Manhattan. I wish they had one named after Kings. Boost Brooklyn.”

The Queens Cocktail:
Adapted from the Savoy Cocktail Book (1930) by Harry Craddock

1 ½ oz gin
1 oz pineapple juice
¾ oz sweet vermouth
¾ oz dry vermouth

Shake. Strain. No garnish.

This one's like a Bronx cocktail but a touch more tropical... in honor of Queens, naturally. Or, is it Queen's? That's how it appeared — with the apostrophe — in the Savoy Cocktail Book, but its close recipe association with the Brooklyn can't be a total coincidence. Indeed, in most later printings of the recipe, the Queens cocktail calls for no apostrophe.

Last, we lack a definitive Staten Island cocktail, although one play for the title is a kind of Tiki joke drink that's just a Piña colada without coconut cream. And yet, it's not too late! Cocktail creators out there, what would you like to drink on, say, the Staten Island Ferry? How to summarize the borough in a glass? Get mixing.

Previously: Learning To Drink Vol. 12: We'll Have Manhattan