These Bottled Cocktails Use Recipes From Actual Bartenders

Just twist and shake for a drink that's shockingly close to a bar experience.

DRNXMYTH
Photo courtesy of DRNXMYTH; Image by Maitane Romagosa for Thrillist
Photo courtesy of DRNXMYTH; Image by Maitane Romagosa for Thrillist

The experience of sitting down at a cocktail bar is tough to match. These intimate spots take you to another world, where you have a front row seat to a stellar performance every time and cocktails are creative and crafted with only the best ingredients.

But what Brandon Schwartz and Lawrence Cisneros have achieved with their ready-to-drink cocktail company, DRNXMYTH, comes pretty close.

The company, which launched in January 2020, has a lineup of classic cocktails like mojitos, margaritas, sours, and punches that can be ordered online, and every drink is made with fresh ingredients, quality spirits, and recipes dreamt up by some of the country’s top bartending talent. Each bottle contains two cocktails, so at about $12 each, it’s like you’re getting a buy one, get one free deal at one of the best bars in town.

“We wanted to figure out how to bottle up what was happening behind the bar and bring it to people everywhere,” Schwartz said, and they certainly did. Unlike the other pre-made cocktails out there, DRNXMYTH comes in a dual-chamber container that allows you to twist the bottle and combine fresh ingredients with spirits on the spot, resulting in a cocktail that tastes freshly shaken—because it really is, just in a bottle instead of a shaker tin.

Schwartz and Cisneros landed on this packaging because they wanted to use the exact same ingredients you’d find behind a bar, but fresh squeezed lime juice, infused water, and other fresh components can’t survive alongside spirits without pasteurization or using artificial ingredients. But with this bottle and a process called cold pressurization, you can keep DRNXMYTH cocktails for about five months as long as the bottle is refrigerated and uncombined.

Another reason DRNXMYTH’s cocktails taste like they could be served at your favorite bar is because many of them actually are. Schwartz and Cisneros started by tapping the creative minds behind the bars they frequented in LA to create recipes for the company. Now the roster of bartenders, influencers, and other cocktail experts involved with DRNXMYTH has expanded all across the country, with Jason Yu from Employees Only, bar veteran Brian Klemm, Charity Kay Johnston of LA’s Madera Group, and more working as collaborators. Each drink is credited to a bartender on the label and online, and these partnerships are real, with a portion of each drink’s sales going back to the bartender who created it.

“Bartenders take such pride in what they do,” explains Bad Birdy, an LA-based bartender and collaborator for DRNXMYTH. “So I like that they are partnering with bartenders to give back to them financially and also showcase their talents.”

She said the founding duo really put bartenders in the driver’s seat, and working with Schwartz and Cisneros to translate her creations into a product that is available widely across the country has been rewarding, especially over the last year when time at a bar stool was harder to come by.

Bad Birdy currently has two drinks available through DRNXMYTH: a rum punch with fresh cold-pressed pineapple juice, banana syrup, lime juice, and coconut; and Hibiscus Haze, a mezcal cocktail with hibiscus, cinnamon, lime, and mint water.

“This is as close as you can get to having a bartender in front of you and getting that fresh cocktail,” she said. “It’s definitely a first of its kind.”

Want more Thrillist? Follow us on InstagramTwitterPinterestYouTubeTikTok, and Snapchat.

Liz Provencher is an associate editor at Thrillist. You can follow her on Twitter or see what she eats on Instagram.