Cocktail Kingdom
The high-end specialty bar-tool company founded 2007 in New York by Greg Boehm and shaped by the working bartenders behind the modern cocktail revival. Cocktail Kingdom’s Japanese jiggers, Boston shakers, Yarai mixing glasses, and Hawthorne strainers are what serious bars buy and what a home bar should aspire to.
Cocktail Kingdom is the bar-tool company that the modern cocktail revival built and that, in turn, built the modern cocktail revival. Greg Boehm—a longtime cocktail-book publisher (Mud Puddle Books, the reprint arm responsible for putting Jerry Thomas’s Bartender’s Guide and Charles H. Baker’s Gentleman’s Companion back in print)—founded the company in 2007 after a research trip to Japan exposed him to the small specialty tools Japanese bartenders used: weighted shakers, finely calibrated jiggers, hand-cut Yarai-pattern mixing glasses, Hawthorne strainers with proper coiled springs. The realization was that nothing of comparable quality was being sold in the United States. Cocktail Kingdom imported, distributed, and eventually started manufacturing.
The catalog now covers essentially every specialty bar tool a serious bartender uses. The Leopold Jigger (designed in collaboration with Denver bartender Jason Kosmas’s Leopold Bros. project) is the standard Japanese-style jigger—1 oz / 2 oz with internal etched lines for 1/4, 1/2, 3/4 oz. Once you’ve used one, every kitchen-store stainless jigger feels like a guess. The Koriko Weighted Shaker Set (28 oz over 18 oz tin-on-tin) is the working bar shaker—heavy enough to seal positively when struck, with a slight angle that helps the break. The Yarai Mixing Glass (16 oz or 24 oz, hand-cut diamond pattern) is the stirring vessel. The Hoffman Hawthorne Strainer is the strainer.
Beyond the basics, Cocktail Kingdom makes the tools you didn’t know you needed: the Teardrop Bar Spoon (extra-long, twisted handle, weighted tip), the Vintage Lewis Bag (heavy canvas with leather closure for crushing ice), the Swizzle Sticks in both metal and traditional bois lélé wood, and a full range of vintage-pattern coupe and Nick & Nora glassware (technically drinkware, but worth knowing CK as the source).
The pricing is real—a Leopold Jigger is $25, a Yarai mixing glass is $45–60, a Hoffman strainer is $20—but the quality is also real. These are tools that last decades. Comparing CK to OXO or kitchen-store basics is comparing a chef’s knife to a steak knife: both cut, but only one is the right answer.