Age of Rediscovery (1990-2000)

By the early 1990s, a handful of curious bartenders started dusting off forgotten recipe books and asking a dangerous question: what if cocktails could be great again? Dale DeGroff at New York's Rainbow Room led the charge, squeezing fresh juice, reviving pre-Prohibition classics, and proving that craft mattered behind the bar just as much as it did in the kitchen. Suddenly, the Cosmopolitan was reintroduced with real cranberry and fresh lime, and bartenders began hunting down obscure bottles of genever and maraschino liqueur that hadn't seen daylight in decades. Sasha Petraske's Milk & Honey opened in 1999 and drew a line in the sand — no flavored vodka, no neon anything, just impeccable technique and respect for the drink. It was a quiet revolution, not yet mainstream, but the seeds planted in this decade would completely reshape how the world thinks about cocktails.