Boozy Book Reviews: 10 Top New Cocktail & Spirits Books of Winter 2022
This winter will see the release of at least 40 new books on cocktails, spirits, beer, and wine in time for holiday gifting. That is quite a lot! We’ll review several of them in the upcoming weeks, but in the meantime, below is a subset of titles I’m most looking forward to.
A Bartender's Guide to the World: Cocktails and Stories from 75 Places by Lauren Mote and James O. Fraioli
Rather than cocktail recipes borrowed from bars around the world, the drinks in this book by Lauren Mote are ones inspired by her own visits to them and the people she’s met along the way. Hardly any bartender is better qualified for the task: Mote was Diageo’s Global Cocktailian and is now Patron’s Global Director of On-Trade Excellence. She really gets around, and in her first book, brings us along for the ride.
The Cocktail Edit: Everything You Need to Know About How to Make All the Drinks that Matter by Alice Lascelles
Financial Times drinks writer Alice Lascelles offers an enticing format for a recipe book. Rather than a book of many classic cocktails paired with a variation for each, Lascelles offers us just twelve classics but six twists for everyone. Some of the variations are themselves classics like the Gibson and Martinez as variations on the Martini. The emphasis of the book is on ease of making the drinks and in creating more of your own with inexpensive but well-made brands of spirits and other ingredients.
Behind the Bar: Gin: 50 Gin Cocktails from Bars Around the World by Alia Akkam
A follow-up to Behind the Bar: 50 Cocktail Recipes from the World's Most Iconic Hotels this brightly-illustrated book focuses exclusively on gin drinks from mostly gin-centric bars including Atlas in Singapore and Dear Irving in New York. Most but not all the drinks are meant to be easy to make, and they’re grouped not by geography but organized into four moods: in the mood (party starters), day drinking, unconventional serve, and introspective evening.
The Cocktail Cabinet: The Art, Science and Pleasure of Mixing the Perfect Drink by Zoe Burgess
Billed as a cross between The Flavor Thesaurus and The Art & Science of Foodpairing, but for cocktails, The Cocktail Cabinet is a guide to creating professional cocktails. To teach us how, the author breaks each cocktail down into the five basic tastes and analyzes why certain pairings work. This is accompanied by recommendations for equipment to invest in, practical tips, and an exploration of techniques used.
Cure: New Orleans Drinks and How to Mix ’Em from the Award-Winning Bar by Neal Bodenheimer and Emily Timberlake
Many of the iconic bars of the craft cocktail renaissance including Death & Co., PDT, The Varnish, The Aviary, and Smuggler’s Cove have put out recipe books, but until this winter a very important one was missing. Cure is a bar known for its innovative and unexpected cocktails that stood out as unique not only in New Orleans but in America overall. The bar’s book includes 100 cocktails, both NOLA classics and Cure’s originals, along with local lore and tips for visiting the city.
Twist: Your Guide to Creating Inspired Craft Cocktails by Jordan Hughes
Like Drinking with Chickens, Beautiful Booze, and Cocktail Chemistry before it, Twist is a drink book by a social media star putting down recipes in print form. Jordan Hughes of the High Proof Preacher Instagram account provides 75 recipes (and, I assume, stunning photos, given his skill at the art) that are modern riffs on classics resulting in drinks like the Guava Daiquiri and pisco-based Peruvian 75.
American Rye: A Guide to the Nation's Original Spirit by Clay Risen
Nobody knows how New York Times staff writer Clay Risen has the hours in the day to produce so many excellent whiskey books as a side project to his main gig, and yet the hits keep coming. In his latest, Risen takes on the newly-popular rye category that had only a dozen brands 15 years ago. After a historical introduction and practical tips on tasting, he rates and provides tasting notes for 225 expressions, with some brief information about the distillery or brand. Impressively, all were blind tasted rather than knowing the producer in advance or relying on brand tasting notes.
Brand Mysticism: Cultivate Creativity and Intoxicate Your Audience by Steven Grasse and Aaron Goldfarb
Advertising and marketing savant Steven Grasse helped create iconic spirits brands including Hendrick’s Gin and Sailor Jerry Rum and restored legacy brands including Narragansett beer. He cites his philosophy as brand mysticism, “a mentality for all endeavors based on keeping an open mind, taking risks, and developing authenticity.” The book promises case studies and tips to recreate his success in spirits branding and in life.
Modern Classic Cocktails: 60+ Stories and Recipes from the New Golden Age in Drinks by Robert Simonson
In A Proper Drink Robert Simonson narrated the birth and progress of the craft cocktail renaissance, and in Modern Classic Cocktails he features many of the best drinks that came out of it. Drinks including the Espresso Martini, Tommy’s Margarita, Old Cuban, and Paper Plane were chosen by Simonson’s criteria that the drinks must be well-known and still frequently ordered in many cocktail bars, not just the bars in which they were created. A common feature of these modern classics is that they’re usually simple to execute, so the recipes easily translate to the home bar.
A Sense of Place: A Journey Around Scotland's Whisky by Dave Broom
Prolific whisky- and often gin- writer Dave Broom’s latest book takes us on a journey exploring Scotch whisky from the point of view of its terroir. Travelling around his native Scotland and visiting distilleries from Islay and Orkney to Speyside, Broom explores the whiskies made there and how the land and location make them unique to the place. The large hardcover book includes many gorgeous photos of landscapes and portraits of whisky makers, rather than the usual copper stills and barrel warehouses of most whisky books.