New introductions by Audrey Saunders and Robert Hess

    An epicenter of this barroom artistry can be found at the Absinthe Brasserie & Bar in San Francisco, the city that spends more money per capita on alcohol than any other in the country.Bartenders Jeff Hollinger and Bob Schwartz share their artisanal approach for stunning creations that unveil a new spectrum of flavors. Fresh herbs and even aromatic lavender are deftly used to augment classic and new cocktail recipes. Syrups and mixes are carefully crafted from scratch, ensuring small-batch perfection and a harmony of flavors. Hollinger and Schwartz also share the colorful anecdotes behind the 21 Hayes, Ginger Rogers, and other signature cocktails created at Absinthe.Acclaimed photographer Frankie Frankeny captures their virtuoso mixing performances with a refreshing take on the cocktail, creating a showpiece for any living room.

    This indispensable guide breaks down bartending into bar essential techniques, and then applies them to building the best drinks.Over 60 of the best drink recipes: The Bar Book contains more than 60 cocktail recipes that employ the techniques you will learn in this craft cocktail book. Each technique is illustrated with how-to photography to provide inspiration and guidance.Bartending and mixology techniques include the best practices for:JuicingGarnishingCarbonatingStirring and shakingChoosing the correct ice for proper chilling and dilution of a drinkAnd, much moreIf you found PTD Cocktail Book, 12 Bottle Bar, The Joy of Mixology, Death and Co., and Liquid Intelligence to be helpful among bartending and mixology books, you will find Jeffrey Morgenthaler's The Bar Book to be an essential bartender book.

    Ingredients, measurements, and preparations are beautifully illustrated so that readers can make professional cocktails at home. Sasha's advice for keeping the home bar, as well as his musings, are collected here to inspire a new generation of bartenders and cocktail enthusiasts.

    Most of all, mixing a sublime cocktail is an art.Preparing a first-class cocktail relies upon a deep understanding of its ingredients, the delicate alchemy of how they work together—their flavor, aroma and color. Most of all, mixing a sublime cocktail is an art. In The Curious Bartender, the mastermind behind three of London’s most avant-garde cocktail bars Tristan Stephenson explores and experiments with the art of preparing the perfect cocktail, explaining the fascinating modern turns mixology has taken. Showcasing a selection of classic cocktails, Tristan explains their intriguing origins, introducing the colorful characters who inspired or created them and how they were intertwined within their historical context. Moving on, he reinvents each drink from his laboratory, adding contemporary twists to breathe fresh life into these vintage classics. Stay true to the originals with a Sazerac or a Rob Roy, or experiment with some of his modern variations to create a Green Fairy Sazerac topped with an absinthe “air” or an Insta-age Rob Roy with the “age” on the side. Also included is a reference section, detailing all the techniques and equipment you will need, making this an essential and exciting anthology for the cocktail enthusiast.

    In doing so, he codified the concoctions that have become the backbone of high-end bars around the world! Often lauded as the father of mixology, Jerry Thomas, in addition to penning this book (the first drink book ever published in America), popularized inventive drinks and elevated the practice of bartending to an art form. At the height of his popularity in the 19th Century, people all over the country were eager to taste Thomas' recipes. While serving as the principle bartender at the Occidental Hotel in San Francisco he earned more money per week than the Vice President of the United States! Perhaps most famous for his signature cocktail, the Blue Blazer, which involves pouring flaming whiskey between two glasses to create a dramatic pyrotechnic display, Jerry Thomas laid the foundations for today's cocktail renaissance while Abraham Lincoln was still in the White House.

     Replete with historical anecdotes, expert observations, notes on technique and ingredients, and of course world-class recipes, Punch will take readers on a celebratory journey into the punch bowl that starts with some very lonely British sailors and swells to include a cast of lords and ladies, admirals, kings, presidents, poets, pirates, novelists, spies, and other colorful characters. It is a tale only David Wondrich can tell-and it is sure to delight, amuse, and inspire the mixologist and party-planner in everyone.

    Make yourself a Mai Tai, put your favorite exotica record on the hi-fi, and prepare to lose yourself in the fantastical world of tiki, one of the most alluring—and often misunderstood—movements in American cultural history. Martin and Rebecca Cate, founders and owners of Smuggler’s Cove (the most acclaimed tiki bar of the modern era) take you on a colorful journey into the lore and legend of tiki: its birth as an escapist fantasy for Depression-era Americans; how exotic cocktails were invented, stolen, and re-invented; Hollywood starlets and scandals; and tiki’s modern-day revival. Featuring more than 100 delicious recipes (original and historic), plus a groundbreaking new approach to understanding rum, Smuggler’s Cove is the magnum opus of the contemporary tiki renaissance. Whether you’re looking for a new favorite cocktail, tips on how to trick out your home tiki grotto, help stocking your bar with great rums, or inspiration for your next tiki party, Smuggler’s Cove has everything you need to transform your world into a Polynesian Pop fantasia.

    Loaded with essential-to-know topics such as barware, tools, and mixing tips.Classic cocktails and new drinks: As the mistress of mixology, the author Mittie Hellmich has the classics down for the Martini, the Bloody Mary—and the many variations such as the Dirty Martini and the Virgin Mary. And then there are all the creative new elixirs the author brings to the table, like the Tasmanian Twister Cocktail or the Citron Sparkler.Illustrated secrets of classic cocktails and more: Illustrations show precisely what type of glass should be used for each drink. With dozens of recipes for garnishes, rims, infusions, and syrups; punches, gelatin shooters, hot drinks, and non-alcoholic beverages; and let's not forget an essential selection of hangover remedies, The Ultimate Bar Book is nothing short of top-shelf.If you liked PTD Cocktail Book, 12 Bottle Bar, Cocktail Codex and The Joy of Mixology, you'll love The Ultimate Bar BookThis makes for a great gift for bartenders and is the ideal addition to any bartender's book collection or for anyone who's looking for books from these categories:• Essential Cocktail Books• Bar Recipe Books• Drink Mixing Books• Alcohol Drink Recipe Books.

    And this new edition contains an additional 16 wonderful pages, including a featured supplement about the olfactory system and how it deepens our enjoyment of wine. Written in a question-and-answer format, the section is coauthored with Wendy Dubit, an expert on the subject. Plus, this unequaled volume retains all the invaluable information, fabulous illustrations, and gorgeous styling of the 20th anniversary edition. Wine lovers will still thrill to Zraly’s inimitable, irreverent style. As always, he answers every question about wine; offers the most up-to-date recommendations; provides advice on buying wine in stores and on the Internet; takes you on a country-by-country, region-by-region ratings tour of the latest vintages; and starts you on your way to becoming a wine connoisseur. Abundant full-color labels and maps complete the enticing picture. More current, more informative, more concise and precise than ever, this remains the wine guide against which all others are judged.

    Sake began with a grain of rice. Scotch emerged from barley. Gin was born from a conifer shrub when a Dutch physician added oil of juniper to a clear spirit, believing that juniper berries would cure kidney disorders. "The Drunken Botanist" uncovers the enlightening botanical history and the fascinating science and chemistry of over 150 plants, flowers, trees, and fruits (and even one fungus).Some of the most extraordinary and obscure plants have been fermented and distilled, and they each represent a unique cultural contribution to our global drinking traditions and our history. Molasses was an essential ingredient in American independence: when the British forced the colonies to buy British (not French) molasses for their New World rum-making, the settlers outrage kindled the American Revolution. Rye, which turns up in countless spirits, is vulnerable to ergot, which contains a precursor to LSD, and some historians have speculated that the Salem witch trials occurred because girls poisoned by ergot had seizures that made townspeople think they d been bewitched. Then there's the tale of the thirty-year court battle that took place over the trademarking of Angostura bitters, which may or may not actually contain bark from the Angostura tree.With a delightful two-color vintage-style interior, over fifty drink recipes, growing tips for gardeners, and advice that carries Stewart's trademark wit, this is the perfect gift for gardeners and cocktail aficionados alike.

    Alcoholica Esoterica presents the history and culture of booze as told by a writer with a knack for distilling all the boring bits into the most interesting facts and hilarious tales. It's almost like pulling up a stool next to the smartest and funniest guy in the bar. Divided into chapters covering the basic booze groups--including beer, wine, Champagne, whiskey, rum, gin, vodka, and tequila--Alcoholica Esoterica charts the origin and rise of each alcohol's particular charms and influence. Other sections chronicle "Great Moments in Hic-story," "Great Country Drinking Songs," "10 Odd Laws," and "Mt. Lushmore, Parts I-V." Additionally, famous quotes on the joys and sorrows of liquor offer useful shots of advice and intoxicating whimsy.Did you know...that the word bar is short for barrier? Yes, that's right--to keep the customers from getting at all the booze.that Winston Churchill's mother supposedly invented the Manhattan?that the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock because the sailors on the Mayflower were running low on beer and were tired of sharing?that you have a higher chance of being killed by a flying Champagne cork than by a poisonous spider?that the Code of Hammurabi mandated that brewers of low-quality beer be drowned in it?that beer was so popular with medieval priests and monks that in the thirteenth century they stopped baptizing babies with holy water and started using beer?

    We have for a long time. But recently, we looked around and realized that, while cocktail bars had sprouted up across the world, good drinks still couldn't be found in the place where we had always mixed them: at home with friends. So we set out from our workshop in Brooklyn, New York, to come up with a solution. What resulted is one part instructional recipe book, one part photo journey through our year of cocktail crafting and one part inspirational peptalk. We think we've ended up with something pretty unique: a cocktail book that expresses our seasonal and straightforward approach to drinks and entertaining, and reminds us that mixing cocktails should be simple, social, and, above all, fun.

    With a chapter for each of ten cocktails--from the grog sailors drank on the high seas in the 1700s to the mojitos of modern club hoppers--Wayne Curtis reveals that the homely spirit once distilled from the industrial waste of the exploding sugar trade has managed to infiltrate every stratum of New World society. Curtis takes us from the taverns of the American colonies, where rum delivered both a cheap wallop and cash for the Revolution, to the plundering pirate ships off the coast of Central America, to the watering holes of pre-Castro Cuba, and to the kitsch-laden tiki bars of 1950s America. Here are sugar barons and their armies conquering the Caribbean, Paul Revere stopping for a nip during his famous ride, Prohibitionists marching against "demon rum," Hemingway fattening his liver with Havana daiquiris, and today's bartenders reviving old favorites like Planter's Punch. In an age of microbrewed beer and single-malt whiskeys, rum--once the swill of the common man--has found its way into the tasting rooms of the most discriminating drinkers. Awash with local color and wry humor, "And a Bottle of Rum" is an affectionate toast to this most American of liquors, a chameleon spirit that has been constantly reinvented over the centuries by tavern keepers, bootleggers, lounge lizards, and marketing gurus. Complete with cocktail recipes for would-be epicurean time-travelers, this is history at its most intoxicating.