Gifts for Cocktail Lovers Who Mix at Home

The Nick & Nora is the small, deep-bowled glass bartenders now use for stirred drinks instead of the wide martini glass: it holds a proper serving without spilling on the walk from bar to chair. Bormioli Rocco's Bartender Novecento version holds 5.25 ounces, the right size for a Manhattan or a martini with room at the top.

The bowl and stem are drawn from one piece of glass, so there is no seam and the stem has a little give. The rim is laser cut thin. They are made in Italy, and for four glasses the price is modest enough to buy two sets.

Skip them for someone who drinks mostly highballs or whiskey on the rocks; the Schott Zwiesel long drink glasses suit them better.

The catch. Thin-rimmed stemware chips more easily than tumblers; keep a spare set in mind.

Clear ice is not a garnish. It is denser and free of the trapped air and minerals that make cloudy ice crack and melt fast, so it chills a drink with less dilution and looks like a bar's. The True Cubes mold makes it by freezing water from the top down, the way a lake freezes, which pushes impurities to the bottom.

Fill it with tap water, freeze for 18 to 22 hours, and it gives four 2 inch cubes. America's Test Kitchen named it the best clear ice mold, according to the maker. The mold is BPA-free silicone.

It asks for patience and freezer room. Skip it for someone with a small freezer or a habit of forgetting to refill ice trays.

The catch. Four cubes a day is the ceiling, so a party needs a few days of planning.

Bitters are the seasoning of a cocktail, a few dashes that decide whether an Old Fashioned tastes of orange or of walnut. Most home bars have one bottle of aromatic bitters and stop there. Fee Brothers' Classic pack adds six, including West Indian Orange, Black Walnut, Chocolate, Cherry and Toasted Almond.

Fee Brothers is a family firm in Rochester, New York, and has been in business for more than 160 years. A bottle lasts a long time at a few dashes per drink, so the set keeps giving for a year or more of experiments.

It is the best all-round gift on this list: useful to a beginner and an enthusiast alike, and nothing to store but six small bottles. Skip it only for someone who does not drink stirred or spirit-forward cocktails.

The catch. Gift-pack lineups change from season to season, so check the six flavors on the listing before buying.

The Basic Bar Selection is the barware range Schott Zwiesel made with Charles Schumann, whose Munich bar is one of the best known in Europe. The long drink glass is his highball: a straight, heavy-based cylinder of about 11 ounces, 6.1 inches tall, the shape for a gin and tonic, a Tom Collins or a whisky highball.

It is made in Germany of Schott Zwiesel's Tritan crystal, which is dishwasher safe and resists chipping and clouding far better than ordinary glass. That matters in a set of six that will be used every weekend.

Skip it for a person who drinks only stirred drinks served up. For them, the Nick & Nora glasses are the better gift.

The catch. Plain by design; someone looking for cut or colored glass will find it severe.

Crafthouse is the barware line Fortessa makes with Charles Joly, a former world champion bartender. The Smoking Box is a glass-sided case on a walnut base with a stainless steel frame. A drink goes inside, the handheld smoker fills the box with wood smoke, and after a minute the door opens on a glass that tastes and smells of it.

It comes with the handheld smoker and 4 ounces of wood chips, and at about 9.5 by 10.8 inches it holds a pair of rocks glasses or a small plate of cheese or nuts. It is theater as much as flavor, and it suits smoky, spirit-forward drinks like an Old Fashioned.

This is a showpiece for someone who hosts and enjoys the ceremony. Skip it for a person with a small bar or who mostly makes sours and highballs; the effect is lost on them.

The catch. Expensive, bulky and used for a narrow range of drinks.