About our data
About WhatDrink data
WhatDrink organises information about drinks so you can decide what to make, order, or pour. This page explains what the data covers, how we use it, and — just as importantly — what it does not promise.
What WhatDrink covers
Our data is built around drinks and the things that describe them. The areas we currently support in public pages are:
- Drinks
- Recipes
- Drink styles
- Ingredients & components
- Flavours
- Food pairings
- Occasions
- Dietary & lifestyle descriptors
- Nutrition & alcohol estimates
- Reviewed drink relationships
- Public venue information
Not every drink has every one of these attributes. Coverage is deeper for popular cocktails and common ingredients, and sparser at the edges. Where an attribute is missing, we prefer to leave it out rather than guess.
How the data is used
The same underlying data powers the features you use across the site:
- • Drink and recipe discovery
- • Side-by-side comparisons
- • Ranked decision guides that weigh trade-offs
- • Ingredient-led discovery (find drinks by what you have)
- • Pairing and occasion guidance
- • Related-drink recommendations
- • Route-safe internal links that only point to real pages
How public data is prepared
Before anything reaches a public page it passes through a consistent process:
Source data
Structured recipe and reference records.
Normalization
Names, units, and identifiers made consistent.
Validation
Values checked against approved data contracts.
Public-safe presentation
Only vetted, resolvable content is shown.
Reviewed recommendations
Relationships are reviewed before they appear.
For more detail on the deterministic and AI-assisted steps involved, see our methodology.
What the data does not guarantee
What this does not guarantee
- Recipes vary by brand, bartender, venue, garnish, glass size, serving size, and preparation.
- Nutrition and alcohol values are estimates unless a source is explicitly cited.
- Lower sugar, calories, or carbohydrates does not automatically mean lower alcohol.
- Dietary descriptors are not allergy or medical guarantees.
- Venue information can change — hours, menus, and even whether a venue is open.
- Pairings and recommendations are useful guidance, not universal facts.
- Similarity between drinks is contextual and only shown when there is evidence for it.
Where to go next
The pages below explain how we build and govern this data in more detail, and how to tell us when something looks wrong:
- • Methodology — how source information becomes structured guidance.
- • Editorial policy — how claims and recommendations are governed.
- • Corrections — report an error you have spotted.
- • Data updates — material changes to our data and methodology.