Cocktail Books: The Topic

[J_Ozzy]

Spring 2022 new/updated releases:

 

Soon

Drink Lightly (Natasha David); April 2022

Claridge’s – The Cocktail Book; April 2022

 

Looking Forward

The Bartender's Manifesto (Toby Maloney, Emma Janzen)  June 2022

Doctors and Distillers (Camper English) July 2022

The Art & Craft of Coffee Cocktails (Jason Clark) September 2022

Modern Classic Cocktails (Robert Simonson) October 2022

Raising the Bar (Brett Adams, Jacob Grier) October 2022

A Bartender's Guide to the World (Lauren Mote, James O. Fraioli) October 2022

Cure (Neal Bodenheimer, Emily Timberlake) October 2022

Drinks With Friends (Sother Teague, Dale DeGroff);  February 2024 (!) (per Amazon.ca)

[J_Ozzy]

An early look forward into some 2023 releases:

 

The Maison Premiere Almanac (Joshua Boissy, Krystof Zizka) April 2023
The Ice Book (Camper English) May 2023
Tropical Standard (Garret Richard, Ben Schaffer) May 2023
The Book of Cocktail Ratios (Michael Ruhlman, Marcella Kriebel) May 2023
How to Fix the Perfect Cocktail (Adam Elan-Elmegirab) August 2023
Drinks With Friends (Sother Teague, Dale DeGroff) February 2024

 

2022 release retrospective:

I particularly enjoyed (in no particular order) Drink Lightly, The Bartender's Manifesto, Cure, and Paddy Drinks for original content.

Drink Lightly presents an interesting take on a fun-yet-still-serious, lower-ABV program, and is a beautiful swan song to Nitecap, for those who never had the pleasure of visiting.

The Bartender's Manifesto walks the reader through an impressive drink design approach, which provides an interesting contrast to that of The Cocktail Codex and other works.

Cure is the bar-centric New Orleans book I've wanted ever since Rogue / Beta Cocktails was released over a decade ago.

Paddy Drinks is a serious deep-dive into Irish whiskey, backed up by the talented folks from The Dead Rabbit.

 

Honorable mention to Modern Classic Cocktails as an excellent curation of great drinks from the late-80's forward.

 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

I've been enjoying Shannon Mustipher's Tiki: Modern Tropical Cocktails.  Good addition to my collection.

 

(eG-friendly Amazon.com link)

 

[J_Ozzy]

Coming Soon (and releases into the summer, per Amazon's listing)

 

The Connaught Bar: Cocktail Recipes and Iconic Creations (Agostino Perrone, Giorgio Bargiani, Maura Milia) April 2024

The Cocktail Parlor: How Women Brought the Cocktail Home (Nicola Nice, foreword by Robert Simonson) April 2024

A Quick Drink: The Speed Rack Guide to Winning Cocktails for Any Mood (Ivy Mix, Lynnette Marrero, Megan Krigbaum) April 2024

The Bartender's Pantry: A Beverage Handbook for the Universal Bar (Jim Meehan, Bart Sasso, Emma Janzen) June 2024

Liqueur: A Global History (Lesley Jacobs Solmonson) July 2024

 

2023 release retrospective:
The Maison Premiere Almanac, Tropical Standard, and The Ice Book were all solid additions to the repertoire.

The Maison Premiere Almanac covered not only the drinks and service program at the now venerable Williamsburg establishment, but also much of the initial design process and detail on the initial open and evolution (what worked, what did not).  Tropical Standard is both a creative and analytical take on the tiki and tiki-adjacent drinks landscape.  The Ice Book is the practical summation (along with some further ideas around creative execution) of more than a decade of Camper English's deep dive into the near-universal cocktail ingredient, direct and to the point in a small form factor.

Honorable mention to For the Love of Cocktails (Evelyn Chick) as a very well-rounded home bartending tome covering the gamut of novel full-proof, low-ABV, and non-alcoholic cocktail options.

Back-catalog pickup mention to 2022's Dicktales, an intensely personal journey through the stories, notes, and letters of the late Dick Bradsell's life and career, an (strong arguments can be made for the pre-eminent) anchoring force of the early cocktail renaissance in London.

[weinoo]

18 hours ago, J_Ozzy said:

2023 release retrospective:

 

Wait! What?! No Robert Simonson's (who I was fortunate enough to make Martini's for over the course of a rather long Martini party):

 

The Encyclopedia of Cocktails (eG-friendly Amazon.com link)?!?!

 

After all, who can forget his 2019 classic: The Martini Cocktail: A Meditation on the World's Greatest Drink, with Recipes (eG-friendly Amazon.com link)

[J_Ozzy]

2 hours ago, weinoo said:

 

Wait! What?! No Robert Simonson's (who I was fortunate enough to make Martini's for over the course of a rather long Martini party):

 

The Encyclopedia of Cocktails (eG-friendly Amazon.com link)?!?!

 

 

oh, solid callout; I read it over the holidays and definitely enjoyed it.  A worthy reference complement to The Oxford Companion, particularly for filling in detail and developments in more recent years (past the Oxford's self-imposed cut-off)

... and now I can't find my copy, it seems I've got some investigating to do