The cocktail guru and beverage entrepreneur had an epiphany over a daiquiri and then read every great book about drinks. We borrowed his best.
1.THE GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION: THE EXOTIC DRINKING BOOK
Charles H. Baker lived an exotic life, even by today’s standards. He travelled the world chronicling drink recipes for Esquire and Gourmet magazines. And here’s the rub: he was born in 1895, he drank with Hemingway and Faulkner, and The Gentleman’s Companion was published in 1939. And so, his recipes and descriptions of drinks like ‘Firpo’s Balloon Cocktail, a.k.a. The Calcutta Classic’, and ‘The East India House cocktail… garnered in The Royal Bombay Yacht Club’ are peppered with wild, witty tales and sound advice. Here’s a gem: ‘Offering up an earnest plea for recentness in all eggs to be used in cocktails or drinks of any kind, for that matter. A stale or storage egg in a decent mixed drink is like a stale or storage joke in critical and intelligent company.’ How cool!
Buy it here.
2. THE BON VIVANT’S COMPANION OR HOW TO MIX DRINKS BY JERRY THOMAS
The Bon Vivant’s Companion at first look is a straightforward recipe book. Spend some time with it and we can see why Thomas is known as “the father of American mixology”. It has 463 recipes including a clutch of ‘Temperance Drinks’ (or zero-proof as they’re called today). Among the recipes of Nuremberg Punch, White Tiger’s Milk, and Tom and Jerry, are detailed notes and a long manual for the ‘manufacture of cordials, liquors and fancy syrups’.
His professorial language makes it an entertaining read; here’s a sample: The “blue blazer” does not have a very euphonious or classic name, but it tastes better to the palate than it sounds to the ear.
Buy it here.
3. LIQUID INTELLIGENCE: THE ART AND SCIENCE OF THE PERFECT COCKTIAL BY DAVE ARNOLD
Only from mad cocktail scientist Dave Arnold – creator of of the Searzall blowtorch, the Spinzall centrifuge, and the founder of the Museum of Food and Drink in NYC – would we expect a cocktail tome that talks about rapid bitters and liquors, red hot pokers with an entire section devoted to ice. The daiquiri, the cocktail that made Bose’s aha moment, is Arnold’s favourite drink. About it, Arnold says, ‘Its reputation has been slandered by generations of careless people slinging Kool-Aid-tasting swill and calling it a daiquiri. The original is a thing of beauty.’
Buy it here.
4. VINTAGE SPIRITS AND FORGOTTEN COCKTAILS: FROM THE ALMAGOOZLUM TO THE ZOMBIE AND BEYOND BY TED ‘DR. COCKTAIL’ HAIGH
In this book, before we get to The Almagoozlum (what’s not to love about that name?) we encounter an image of a small axe with a short handle, and an anecdote about why bartenders loved hatchets once. The tongue-twisting drink in the title offers a nod to Baker’s book above, and has Jenever, Jamaican rum, gomme, and can be measured in gills. The Almagoozlum must be, according to Haigh, shaken ‘very, very hard and long in a large iced cocktail shaker and serve[d] tremulously into several previously chilled cocktail glasses’. Are we having fun yet?
Buy it here.
5.THE BAR BOOK BY JEFFREY MORGENTHALER
The first two chapters in The Bar Book are all about juice and juicing. The next is about sodas and mixers, the fourth and fifth are about syrups. There is one chapter about dairy and eggs, another about measuring, and one dedicated to ice. It closes with a chapter on garnishing. Interspersed throughout, are recipes that shake and stir everything together. This is a book for nerds who want to get jigger with it.
Buy it here.
6. COCKTAIL CODEX BY ALEX DAY
In half a dozen sections, each named after a cocktail, Day takes a libation that most of us are familiar with (the martini, the daiquiri, to name two) breaks it down to geeky basics, then goes to town with it, and then encourages us to riff on it as well. Even so, it’s an easy read, uses simple language, and assumes nothing. This is a book for the noob and the pro in equal measure. May we never drink a highball without context ever again.
Buy it here.