A few months back, my girlfriend and I began First Pour Cocktails – a site to help us document our enthusiasm for cocktails and our journey to write a cocktail book. The journey started almost a year and half ago in our kitchen in the trendy Tremont neighborhood of Cleveland. Inspired by trips to great local cocktail bars like The Velvet Tango Room, Porco’s, and The Spotted Owl – we began to craft our own cocktails. These wouldn’t just be ordinary cocktails though, we wanted them to be inspired by and pay homage to pop culture characters that everyone could relate to. More so than that – we want them to be good. After all – anyone could put blue curacao in a screw driver and call it a Sonic Screwdriver (from Doctor Who) – but we wanted to be something more.

The results at first were decidedly mixed (as you might remember from some of the cocktails First Pour Wine put together). Some drinks we brought to testing were a smash-hits. A Count Olaf inspired Manhattan caused my father to buy multiple bottles of liquor he’d never considered just to make it. Other original creations were – well – drinks of a fashion, but not one you’d order out. Some were middling, and others were disastrous and down the sink they went. Overall though, we’ve gotten significantly better in the past year.

At First Pour Cocktails, we want to pass on some of that information to inspiring cocktail enthusiasts and those just starting down the path. To do so, we’ll be focusing on rating and reviewing spirits, posting original cocktails, highlighting great books and bars, and sharing some tips and tricks we’ve found to help make your best cocktails at home. We’re looking forward to seeing some of you there – but in the mean time – have a little preview with our improvement over The Porn Star Martini – the “Yeah Baby!” inspired by Austin Powers.