I do think it's a generational thing. I also think that liquor is super expensive so "we" serve a few drinks and the wine we like. A party is a few hours so if they don't serve anything I would like, it is fine.

I'm not sure age or a specific generation has much to do with it......more a matter of what you grew up with :-)

If you define a cocktail as a mixed drink, then I have been drinking 'cocktails' since I was of drinking age. And I will be 70 my next birthday. Margaritas, G&T's, daiquiris, Cosmopolitans, Manhattans, martinis, gimlets, Bloody Mary's or Bloody Caesars and my personal summertime favorite, a Greyhound, are all cocktails I (and other family members and friends) enjoy. Don't have them always at family dinners or gatherings but often as a preprandial refreshment with a few nibbles or hors d'oeuvres. Sometimes cocktails are replaced with wine but wine is always served with dinner in my family whether we enjoy cocktails first or not.

I will also say that my British parents observed 'cocktail hour' every evening at 6pm until the day they died!!

I also think there are more "flavored" liquors available than there were a decade or so ago. When we owned the bar/grille, we'd have vodka, and lime vodka and cherry vodka. Now there are about a zillion flavors of vodka. Same with Schnapps, it used to be peppermint and now it's cinnamon and butterscotch and flavors I can't even remember. Rum isn't just light and dark, it's banana and coconut and pineapple and melon. More options translate into more opportunities to invent a "signature" cocktail and serve it. Of course, that assumes that everyone is going to like the same thing, which is never true.

Sushipup, I also remember "garbage can punch", it was a big hit here with teenages. A million years ago, when I was a teenager, the legal drinking age in Michigan was 18. Lots of graduation parties had garbage can punch.

Annie

While my group was wine or beer, my granddaughters are into mixed hard liquor drinks. Eldest is a bar tender at a major restaurant and mixes all sorts of fancy drinks for customers. Personally I have recently grown a fondness for flavored vodka martinis and Tawny Port.... but not in the same glass.

Look at any vintage bartending recipe book from the 30's or the 50's and you will find things like a sazerac and a singapore sling and a side car and whiskey sour and all manner of other things. People have been making strange mixtures for many many years...but Annie is right about all the flavored vodkas and rum lately.
Some years back, our liquor store was moving and having huge sales on all sorts of strange stuff, and I bought cranberry vodka and vanilla vodka and 3 different flavored rums.....and only as ip or 2 is gone from each bottle>
I and pretty well most people who has a drink at my house drink pretty basic stuff...vodka or gin martinis and scotch or bourbon on ice with a splash.
I think "new drinkers" are looking for something that tastes like soda pop and that's why all the fruity frou frou drinks. Years ago my father told me "If you don't like the taste of a liquor, don't drink it....but don't mix it with something sweet to kill the taste, that will only ruin your appetite and make you sick!"
I cringe when I see someone order a black Russian as a before dinner cocktail. Who wants dinner after that?

I think Linda's onto something with the soda-pop reference. I'm not speaking of "cocktail" as a mixed drink. I posted this thread in response to someone talking of serving a "signature cocktail" at a party. She was going to have just wine plus her whateveritwas cocktail. And my son and DIL and their 'yummy' drinks that I found awful. And every restaurant having something unique, usually sweet.

I think it's all about marketing and profit. Younger people are plugged in to the internet where they're being constantly bombarded with enticements from advertisers and "great ideas" pinned by their friends on Pinterest. Lol! The sweet concoctions are targeted at people who don't regularly drink alcohol. The 'special flavors' (like cranberry vodka) are nothing but a marketing ploy to have more sales.

I think it's definitely generational. We, the '60's generation, drank wine, or sometimes beer. Our parents drank mixed drinks. Our children drink them.

It's fun to try some of the old cocktails from the '20's. And new inventions. Recently I pickled some cherries for my son-in-law to make a Homeward Angel, a strange version of a Manhattan. I hated it, he liked it. I was interested to taste rye whiskey. Never developed a taste for whiskey. I do occasionally drink a gin and tonic, but I make it very weak.

Well, it's not only flavored liquor -- it's flavored EVERYTHING. There used to be coke and Pepsi and if you went to a soda fountain you could get a cherry coke or a vanilla Pepsi but tea and coffee were plain as was vodka and rum. Now there are all flavors of coffee and if you have plain coffee all sorts of syrups to put in it, soda beverages come in a big range of flavors as does tea. And the liquor -- vanilla, cinnamon, orange, honey, cherry, strawberry, kiwi, cranberry. It's almost like this generation doesn't like anything plain! So it's not just liquor it's EVERYTHING liquid!

When we entertain, we often make a pitcher of "something" to serve pre-dinner but we also pour our dinner wine if our guests prefer and we also have non-alcoholic for those that prefer that. Sometimes we'll set up a bar but we don't have a lot of mixers to go with the alcohol -- perhaps only tonic and coke.

I remember cocktails when I was in my teens in the 60s. We drank Screwdrivers that came premixed in a bottle - Tango. We drank 7&7 because Seagrams was cheap and readily available. We drank Rum and Coke when we couldn't find Seagrams.

In the 70s we switched to wine coolers. Anyone remember Bartles and James?

By the 80s we were drinking French wine and Scottish whisky, and these lasted through the 90s and into the next century. Mixed drinks? No one remembered. And over the years, people would bring a bottle of wine to a party and rarely drink it. Perhaps, in our crowd at least, alcohol was fading away.

Now that we live in a legal state, people come to parties and bring food or cannabis-infused food. Hardly anyone our age drinks anymore. I guess as the end gets closer, we do everything we can to stay healthy enough to live as long as possible. Alcohol is not something that aids in that effort.

I don’t think it’s generational. Just trendy. I was pondering, like Martha Scott, about how EVERYTHING seems to be flavored. Hard liquor, beer, cereal, coffee, etc.

I definitely noticed the trend, starting a number years ago. Mixology is 'in' nowadays among a certain set, same goes for craft brewing. My area now has something like a hundred small breweries.

Hipsters!

Not that it's a bad thing, either = J

I didn’t read the OP as questioning cocktails per se, but rather the offering of just one particular drink. I’ve been to parties where someone is mixing up batches of their specialty - and I’ve hosted occasions where there’s a theme-appropriate drink such as margaritas for Cinco de Mayo, but there should be other choices. Best to keep a bottle you like in the car, just in case.

Yes, our foodie son and his wife will make a cocktail for all of us prior to holiday or birthday meals here. They are often served in stemmed crystalware. I have loved every drink he has served except the one where the liquor was steeped in hot peppers. The directions said to steep for 20 minutes, but he left it overnight. I could not drink it because it was so spicey hot.

Cocktails came into fashion during Prohibition because the mixers disguised the disgusting taste of bathtub gin and the like.

When I was in college we often had parties themed around a specific cocktail, and that was decades ago, so it's not new, though I agree it's trendy.

A lot of the current trend started with marketing and branding, as others have alluded to. It cuts way down on inventory costs, inventory management and training, if you push a small menu of "signature" cocktails, rather than having a fully stocked bar and highly trained bartenders who can whip you up anything you ask for. People go to X Bar and Y Restaurant because there's a particular drink or dish they can only get there, so the branding helps success--assuming the drinks are good. It's also easier to get them made with consistency if there are only a few that they make by the dozen, rather than a whole bar manual's worth of possibility, again, allowing for far less training and employment cost.

Caterers do the same thing, and have been pushing signature cocktails on the hosts of weddings and galas for at least 20 years. Again, it cuts down on costs, and also is good for the host because there are far fewer open bottles. People are also, I'm pretty sure, less likely to overindulge on sweet drinks because the mixers are a lot harder to down in quantity than the booze, making the job of policing who is drinking how much easier.

It's no wonder that it's spread to small private parties at home. :)

I hardly ever drank until I was 30, and then I decided that I liked to have wine with dinner on occasion. If I went to a bar in my 20s, I might buy one drink, as an obligation, but I might not drink it - alcohol made me feel tired, and I did not like that. Now I like to have a drink either before, during, or after dinner, depending on my feeling. If it is before dinner, then I probably would have a gin and tonic; with dinner it is wine, or possibly beer, and after dinner it would be a liqueur, or possibly the dreaded black (or white) Russian.

I have a cocktail recipe book, but I have not used it much - I use it mostly as a reference. When I give parties, I often make Margaritas - partly because I think they are festive. I also like a Bloody Caesar but seldom have them.

I went to a wedding reception in San Blas, Nayarit, Mexico in 1976 - everyone who happened to be in town (a very small town) was invited - and they served Mexico gin (ginevra) with coconut water from coconuts grown on the beach. They would cut the coconuts open without husking them and pour the coconut water into a large galvanized tub and add the gin. It had a slight sweet taste to it, but I did like it, although it is not the same if you do not use Mexican gin.

I think multi-flavored drinks is trendy rather than generational.

I have served a single king of cocktail when I had a larger party and no bartender. It was too big for a "mix it yourself", so I made pitchers of whiskey sours and also had a picture of lemonade for those who didn't want booze. I served two carafes per table - one red wine, one white wine. It worked quite well for that party with very little help.

Cocktails used to be whiskey sours, martinis, and gin and tonic, maybe a Manhattan or one of the Russians. Now they emphasize the sicky sweet. And pomegranate (I sometimes do like the latter - if they refrain from sicky sweet...)

It depends on the crowd I am with, as to what they offer.

The sweeter the drink, the easier it goes down...and the drunker a drinker gets....and bubbles in a mixer are no deterrent. Ever been to a kegger? People can drink a lot of beer!
Actually cocktails began with the old English mixes of "spirits, bitters and sugar" and really had a resurgence when they figured out how to harvest and store ice.
Prohibition didn't promote cocktails but rather cut into their consumption as it did with all alcohol

About once a week some friends and I go to a "Cheers style bar and have a couple of drinks, chat, greet friends and watch the bartender. The number of ingredients that go into the everyday drinks made in this small midwestern neighborhood bar is mind boggling...things I had never heard of before Is aw them poured into a glass or shaker. Blue stuff....red stuff....milky white stuff i ddition to vodka, gin, tequila and who knows what else.
I think the modern penchant for strange mixed drinks rather than the basic "well drinks" comes from 40 years of people drinking a "coke" 4 or 5 times a day and being used to everything they drink being sweet.

https://vinepair.com/spirits-101/history-of-the-cocktail/

When I first read the topic, my first thought was my parents evening routine. When dad would come home from work, he would fix a drink for mom and himself. Some nights it might be a whisky sour, vodka collins, G&T among others. They would both have the same thing and typically only one. The kids were not allowed in the living room while they had their drink unless one of us was in trouble.

I think cocktails are currently trendy, but also somewhat generational. I grew up in a wine and beer generation and my sons came of age in the craft brews and emerging cocktails generation. One son got his bartending certification while in grad school to supplement income -- and to exercise another creative side. He's gotten into infusions and bitters and the whole mixology thing. But not everything sweet. Not at all. It surprises me to hear so many people saying that.

As far as having one cocktail for a party, I do think that is both a budget friendly approach and a desire to be creative and impress. That doesn't mean it always works.

I think it could be a generation thing. Like some one else said, more flavored liquors are available now days. It is a thing, to decide which one or two mixers (cocktails) you are going to serve at a party. That way you can make sure you purchase all the ingredients. It does usually end up cheaper then wine or a full bar. Especially if your mixer contains a fruit juice or two.

My observation is that most of the frou frou drinks are consumed by women. Ever see a man drinking an appletini? or a Cosmos?

If I went to a party where they only served 'specialty' cocktails and no wine or beer, I'm drinking water and leaving early.

I don't think it is a generational thing, more just a personal taste thing. I remember my parents making martinis, margaritas, etc. over 40 years ago. And now I do too. I also drink wine, beer - totally depends on what sounds good and what we are eating.

I for one am not a big fan of the various flavored versions of classic alcohols (vodka, etc.) - that's what the fruit juices are for.

"I for one am not a big fan of the various flavored versions of classic alcohols (vodka, etc.) - that's what the fruit juices are for."

IDK.......pepper vodka adds a seriously good 'spark' to a Bloody Mary!!

That's what tobasco is for.

I add that too. And horseradish :-) But pepper vodka adds a depth of sharp flavor the two additives do not.

I think it's a combo of lots of things, generational is not one of them though since cocktails have been around forever.

The only difference now is the variety, oh my god.. the variety. I still don't think I've gone through every flavored Vodka and I'm a Vodka fanatic. The liqueurs too- every flavor imaginable.

Personally, I love experimenting with friends, it's just fun. A cocktail, or as I call them, mixed drinks, also go a long way. I mean who's going to sit there with a glass of vodka and sip it all night? I'm sure some people do, but most won't. But "nursing" a mixed drink is much easier, and won't get you sloppy drunk like straight alcohol would.

Beer is still very popular and new breweries pop up all the time here. I also have a few friends who won't drink anything but wine- snobs ;)..lol..

What I mean by 'generational' is that I never recall people my age or older (Boomers---I am 70) drinking much hard liquor at all, ever since I was 21. Wine and beer, or the old mixed drink cocktails we learned from our parents. Now younger people serve "specialty cocktails" at events but not an open bar with mixed drinks.

I guess I didn't make myself very clear (or no one read my initial post!)

"What I mean by 'generational' is that I never recall people my age or older (Boomers---I am 70) drinking much hard liquor at all, ever since I was 21. "

I think you made your point quite clear. But I - and apparently a few others - have issues with the "generational" thing :-) I will be 70 on my next birthday. My sibs are older. But we have enjoyed cocktails or mixed drinks ever since we were of legal age. And so do most of my other friends of a similar age. I don't think we are necessarily unique, either. So I honestly do not think it has anything to do with different generations and what they favor but just what one is used to, grown up with or is comfortable with.

Sushipup- Every one I know has open bars at special events like weddings and such, and all serve mixed drinks. They're in their late 20's to mid-40's.

The specialty cocktails are generally a gimmick at a bar, or small dinner parties, generally at casual events with friends and family. Like what your son and daughter-in-law served at Thanksgiving. I have to admit, I'm curious to know what it was. I've rarely heard a cocktail referred to as "god awful" lol..

Yes, Ellie, I'm talking about the small parties. If we go a party with son and DIL and their friends, we know to take our own wine, or there will be none among the younger crowd. They come to our house and ask for assorted ingredients that we rarely have on hand, even tho we do stock a 'normal' bar (bourbon, scotch, gin, vodka, rum). We go to the homes of other Boomer-age people for casual events and there are assorted wines and beer offered, but rarely liquor.

I came of age when I started college in the '60s. Beer was the cheap drink, but I could never stomach it. We drank screw drivers, rum and cokes, 7n7s at campus parties. Going out to have a drink might mean a fancy drink such as a mai tai, grasshopper, or brandy alexander. If beer was my only choice, I had water or soda pop.

Like sushipup, we see a generational shift in drinking. I'm in my 60's, and my friends/family of the same age or slightly older, are big on wine - very big - but only occasional hard alcohol.

When I go out with younger friends, however, over the last 10 years I saw cocktails becoming a larger part of their pre-dinner drinking than previously. What had been a glass of Chardonnay or Pinot Gris, was shifting to cocktails. But NOT classic cocktails - people expect every bar to have unique cocktails, and they'll pick what appeals to them.

A lot of them are sweet - most not overly so, but there are some that make you think, "Wow, back to 'adult Kool-aid' again!"

Interestingly, I'm finding most Gen Y and younger do like wine, but don't know much about it. It's so much more expensive than it used to be - when I was in my 20's, Cabs were $7 a bottle and French burgundy was $14. We could taste dozens of different wines over a year's time, without spending a lot of $$.

Now, of course, a good cab can be $50 and French burgundy is out of even my price range. With the retail market, I wouldn't be surprised if younger drinkers find it cheaper to have a couple of cocktails, then a glass of wine from what's available that night, rather than risk dropping $60+ for a bottle of wine that might prove indifferent.

Some of you might enjoy the menu archive of Trick Dog of San Francisco, which is very well known for its bar, listing past cocktails they offered:

http://www.trickdogbar.com/menu-archive/

I am 80.....and in my 20's and 30's we definitely served alcohol and beer....not so much wine. I remember "M and M" parties....served only martinis and manhattans....epic!
Maybe it was just our crowd, but we drank hard liquor....a lot! Belonged to a dinner group of people about my age. There were drinks before dinner, mainly gin martinis, and wine with dinner and then the tray of brandy, B and B, Drambui, and perhaps limoncello of Boggs cranberry.
My mid 50's kids drink the hard stuff but also lots of wine and beer. It seems that mostly the women drink wine. I discovered a while back that wine sometimes gives me a very stuffy nose, so at a party where I don't ask to read the label I stick to something simple like Scotch or Vodka.

@jakkom
WOW.. those cocktails. Considering they use some of the most expensive liquors, I'm guessing the prices for their drinks are pretty high. Still, I would almost kill to try their "Seasick Hedgehog"

Added The Trick Bar to my must try places. Thanks for the link.

Interesting discussion. I do think it depends on your culture, and different cultures have different drinking traditions. However, America tends to have a big consumer culture with various trends being pushed. I'm a late boomer who grew up in a middle American small town, and most people did not drink that much, and when they did, it was beer or if you were into the heavy stuff, hard liquor with maybe a little soda water or a splash of a soft drink, aka "rum and coke." There was however, a big push during the 60's for sophistication among the masses via advertising. My folks got a very swanky bar set for a wedding gift, and both had recipe books for cocktails in their libraries. They lived in San Francisco for a while so became big wine drinkers before it was trendy. I grew up drinking wine, unlike most of my peers. I remember my folks being into making daquaris, which were a popular MCM drink. We also hung out with some folks from Russia/Eastern Europe who put vodka in everything! And some Italians and others who made their own dessert wines and liqueurs. Those days seem quite sophisticated to me looking back on them. I'm allergic to beer, and I remember in college always being the weird one out because I either drank wine, which seemed too fru fru in college, or a mixed drink with vodka, which was pretty expensive! That was before the days of every kind of "cooler" and mixed drink being packaged and sold like soda pop. Hard root beer, hard fruit sodas, hard lemonade, etc. That is definitely driving today's younger generation's taste. I love all the mixed drinks, but they are expensive and full of calories in which I can no longer indulge. My bladder can't take much alcohol either. So, as usual, youth is wasted on the young. I wish I had lived in the days where I could have both the money and occasion to indulge in a cocktail or two on a semi-regular basis. Too often, and it isn't that special, IMHO. But can add a fun twist to a social gathering of friends.