House-made tonics, botanical-infused gin, fat-washed bourbon, there’s a wave of innovation cresting right now in our best bars and some restaurants. Amidst an invigorated cocktail culture, intrepid bartenders are turning to fresh, in-season produce and native ingredients and some bars are employing actual mixologists instead of relying on waiters to think up a yuzu twist on the mule.

As cocktails become the extension of our gastronomical lust, every restaurant and pub, every back-alley nook with a few stools and an ice bucket, is getting in on the cocktail zeitgeist. Everyone wants a swig from the salt-crusted mason jar. But many get it wrong.

Some are rudely sour, some cloyingly sweet or phonily complicated, others have so much garnish and flourish it’s like having an order of flotsam with your drink.

I recently had a cocktail scattered with lantana, the flowers from that toxic, endemic and prickly weed. The floral garnish turned the drink into an icy, unsettling brew that had me weighing up whether $13 was worth a brief poisoning. Being so small and so abundant the flowers were impossible to pluck from the drink, so my top lip was left with a bloomy moustache while my teeth worked as a sieve.

Scan the list for something you recognise now – “that looks simple and elegant” – only to discover that everything you like about the cocktail has been replaced by something else in a bid to up the ante. Sake instead of vodka, burdoch syrup instead of sugar, any number of perfectly good classic drinks being wrecked with Midori, it’s all being done out there in the name of thirst quenching. Curiosity gets the upper hand and we’re left wondering where all the old-fashioned old-fashioneds have gone.

A short cocktail list speaks of intent, a focal point for the imbiber. But long lists are on the rise, and the popularity of veritable cocktail tomes now mean you need a glass of bubbly while you figure out what you want to drink. Flick through the pages of lemon myrtle-infused gin and nine variations of the Hemingway Daiquiri on some of the longer lists; we’re running into thousands of new cocktails being cranked up solely to fill these menus. Determined to brand themselves as cocktail specialists, be the masters of all, many bars get it wrong. Every single drink being dreamed up by the owner’s girlfriend and rolling off the bar doesn’t deserve its place on the menu.

Ornate doesn’t necessarily equal bad. Inside Eau de Vie in Sydney and Melbourne, bartenders create a choose-your-own-adventure martini, turning classic to anything but, and it works. Punters navigate Ciroc, Grey Goose, Belvedere and Ketal One, or Tanqueray, Sipsmith and Martin Millers, bitter twists of celery, lavender, grapefruit, plum and even chocolate, rinses and brines involving Absinthe, olive, rosewater or Cointreau and garnishes including anchovy-stuffed olives, cucumber, lime twists, ruby grapefruit twists. The list has justified its own length and thankfully informed staff will redirect misguided slurping rogues on what works.

Eau de Vie also proves that a spin on an old favourite can work with a trio of small batch cocktails in its own flask-shaped bottles, including a cold drip negroni, coconut and banana old fashioned and a smoked bacon and maple Manhattan.

There are things to enjoy in the cocktail offerings of many of our bars: great alcohol, beautiful list design, a few laughs at convincing references to Ron Burgundy or Captain Zissou. In the excellent case of Rockpool Bar and Grill, there’s even a rules list that includes “no hooting, no hollering” and “remember, nothing is on the house but the roof”. Because drinking cocktails is supposed to be fun, after all. But we raise a glass to the bars and restaurants that prove drinking is about balance and simplicity as well. That includes everything from flavour profiles to list length, creating drinks that we can wrap our heads (and hands) around, as well as keeping the local toxic weeds away from the glass.

This article first appeared in Sunday Style.