Collection: Cocktail Books

A deep shelf of drinks books, from a slim guide under fifteen dollars up to the large hardbacks. Most sit around twenty to twenty-five, and between them they cover almost every spirit and every city worth drinking in.

The city books are the easiest place to start. There is one for New Orleans, London, Paris, Italy, D.C. and New York, each with over a hundred recipes and profiles of the bars and bartenders behind them, so the book works as a guide to the place as well as a recipe collection. The New York Times Essential Book of Cocktails is the one to buy if you only want a single volume.

Alongside those are the books organised by spirit. Whiskey Cocktails covers forty recipes with a chapter on the classics before moving into variations. Mezcal and Tequila Cocktails runs to more than sixty drinks and covers the history of agave alongside them. Bubbly and Rosé Cocktails handle sparkling wine, and Mocktails covers the low and no-alcohol end properly rather than as an afterthought.

There are the thematic ones too. Kindred Spirits is forty drinks for couples, written by the mixologist behind a well-known drinks account, with date ideas alongside. Nightcap collects more than forty recipes designed to close an evening, some to keep the night going and some that double as dessert. Slow Drinks is the most interesting of the collection: organised by season, it teaches how to turn foraged or shop-bought botanicals into meads, country wines, sodas and tinctures.

The reference shelf fills out with The Ultimate Bar Book and The Cocktail Bible, which is an A to Z of two hundred classic and contemporary drinks.

If you are buying for someone setting up a bar, a city book plus a spirit book covers more ground than either alone, and the cocktail picks, shakers and glasses in bar and cocktail go with them.

We keep the range in stock, and new titles arrive as they are published. If there is a particular book or region you are looking for that you are not able to find on the website, reach out to us and we will be glad to help.