2026 · Experiments
Cocktail lists are usually ranked or alphabetical. That hides the useful question: what does this drink actually taste like next to the others?
I plotted fifty popular cocktails on two axes — sweet to bitter, citrusy to spirit-forward — then added filters for spirit, method, and glass.
A live interactive map of the 50 most popular cocktails, plotted by flavor so you can filter and open any recipe.
Cocktail Flavor Map started as a small experiment: take the world’s most popular cocktails and put them on a map you can actually read. Not another ranked list. A spatial view — sweet to bitter, citrusy and refreshing to spirit-forward and boozy — so you can see neighbors, not just names.
The constraint was to keep it useful on a phone. Fifty glasses, filters, and a recipe drawer had to stay readable without becoming a dashboard.
A list answers “what’s popular.” A map answers “what’s close to what I already like.” That second question is how people actually order at a bar.
Position is the interface: if the axes are wrong, the whole product is decoration.
Filters dim, they don’t destroy: non-matches fade so you keep the geography of the map.
One tap to a recipe: the map is the index; the glass is the page.
I looked at existing cocktail apps and sites. Most sort by spirit, ingredient, or popularity. Flavor is treated as a tag, not a coordinate. That makes “something like a Negroni but less bitter” a search problem instead of a glance.
The 50 most popular cocktails in the world, mapped by flavor.
I tried a 3D flavor space and a cluster view. Both looked clever and were hard to scan. Two axes plus filters won: you always know where you are, and you can still cut by gin, shaken, or coupe.
01
A wheel looks like a tasting card. A scatterplot lets you compare neighbors and leaves room for filters without rotating the whole set.
02
Hiding drinks collapses the map and you lose orientation. Fading keeps the landscape while the active set stays obvious.
03
Tapping a cocktail opens its recipe in place. The map stays the home screen instead of becoming a poster you leave.
The live site plots fifty cocktails from sweet to bitter and from citrusy & refreshing to spirit-forward & boozy. Filters cover flavor profile, base spirit, method, and glass. Matching drinks stay readable; the rest fade. Tap any glass for the recipe.
I designed and built the map as a personal experiment — a complete, public tool rather than a concept deck.
50 cocktails on one map
Catalog
Flavor, spirit, method, glass
Filters
Live on Vercel
Status
I’d add a “start from a drink you know” search earlier — the map is clearer once you have an anchor.
Axis labels need more room on small screens; I’d test a stacked legend before shipping the next version.
Stop waiting on developers. Start shipping complete websites — and keep all the revenue that comes with it.
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