Pour Together: A Cocktail Recipe Book

Introduction

For the better part of two decades, cocktails have fascinated me. I read about them. I report on their goings-on. I fray the patience of bartenders with endless questions about them. I’ve attempted to master making my own concoctions. And boy, do I find great pleasure in drinking them. When it comes to cocktails, I am a student, a scribe, a tinkerer, and, if I’m being honest, sort of a groupie.

Until now, in sitting down to ink a whole book on cocktails, I hadn’t dwelled much on why I fell so hard (figuratively) for this one particular domain of beverage culture. So, I thought for a while about what fuels this unshakable crush of mine.

The story of cocktails appeals to the journalist in me. I spent many of my young-writer years living in Chicago as witness and customer to the amazing rise of the city’s modern cocktails and spirits culture. I started to document the scene for local publications like The Chicagoist and later, Serious Eats. (Venues for cocktail journalism grew over this period as well, including the addition of PUNCH, where I contribute presently.) Meanwhile, seminal books like David Wondrich’s Imbibe! came along to complement my barstool education. What I learned is that mixed drinks have a long, colorful past, decorated with gumptious characters and embellishments to sort through. We’re lucky to be still living through the best of times, when the drinks and the community of talented people making them are at their finest. Bartending was, before Prohibition, a much-admired profession; great bartenders were treated like celebrities. Prohibition disrupted that trajectory for decades, but today the craft is reinvigorated and as alive as ever. There’s so much to say and celebrate about cocktail culture. As you flip through this book, I hope noise from this centuries-old party is audible.

Making drinks is also a creative, culinary discipline, and the sandbox is as big as the world. The supply of ingredients with which to experiment is ever-growing. Distillates have been the traditional anchor of a cocktail, but today really anything potable is in play. And there are equally great drinks to be made across the range of alcohol content, starting from none at all in a zero-proof cocktail, to the stiffest tiki drink concocted with a slew of different rums.

Tastiness is another lure, of course. When the essential mechanics of a cocktail—flavor, aroma, texture, balance, and presentation—roll up into a delicious, cohesive package, I’m content, appreciative.

But what I came to recognize is that none of the above reasons fully explains my obsession. Yes, a well-made drink communicates in a physical, material way that delivers units of worldly pleasure. But that’s not unique; many foods do the same. Cocktails hold more meaning.

So I dug deeper. I backtracked through past encounters I’ve been fortunate to have with truly exceptional cocktails. All those essential elements I mentioned a moment ago were in harmony. The drinks possessed personality and complexity. My palate was happy. But the cocktails I remember best also had a quality that was suprasensory.

Each one grabbed my full attention with a single sip. Each was posture-altering. Delight washed over me in the experience of a transformation: in the glass was stuff that occupied a state of being belonging to none of its raw materials. A Dry Martini once had this effect on me. I had had many before, but I count this one as my first. Bracing, bright, and alive as spring, this Martini unmasked all those others that came before it as imposters. Familiarity with the work of gin and vermouth on their own doesn’t prepare you for the music of an unforgettable Martini. That—chasing the moment gold springs from lesser metals—is what’s kept me pulled up close to cocktails all this time.

To come back briefly to history, it’s worth pointing out that the old practice of alchemy, of attempting to turn lead into gold, isn’t so distant a relative from that of mixing drinks. The word alchemy comes to us bearing the patina of Arabic, but its origins are ancient. Some scholars see its roots in a Greek term, kymia, which means “pour together.”

The connection to mixing makes sense: the alchemist’s chief project was to invent elixir—a liquid that could manifest precious metal, but also prolong life. Today we accept that no such thing as elixir exists; nothing can do all that. And yet, when a cocktail takes the edge off a day, or inaugurates a meal, or brings friends together for a celebration, who’s to say that drink hasn’t helped put a bit more life in our pockets?

Truly exceptional cocktails, I came to realize, perform magic tricks. They can turn out different, better, and more interesting than the individual things that made them. Truly exceptional cocktails, like well-selected vinyls to accompany a late-night dinner party, can give our mood a new rhythm. They color in the beauty of an occasion.

Throughout their history, the majority of mixed drinks contain four, five, or even more ingredients. As you read this, the best cocktail bars around the world are busy devising new ones. I love that for them. Keep it up! Make those beautiful and intricately layered drinks, like houses of cards stacked high. I adore those drinks for being wellthought-out treatises on flavor and texture and balance. Yet I am also here to tell you, with the long-windedness of a whole book, that leaning one card against another—as modest in ambition as that may sound—can work magic, as well. In fact, I would argue there’s no more remarkable alchemy in the realm of cocktails than when but a pair of ingredients pour together to make magic happen.

That’s why we’re here, and what the journey we’re about to embark on is about. Because I’ll confess, as much as I love enjoying elaborate cocktails at bars, at home I often favor simpler preparations. The results you can achieve with two ingredients are bigger, broader, and more delicious than you probably expect. That riveting Dry Martini, along with many other drinks, is proof of that.

You may have arrived here because you are living on your own for the first time and are trying your hand at entertaining. Or you are looking for easy yet elevated drinks you can bring to picnics in the park that aren’t just beer or wine. Maybe you’re tired of only mixing one-note Screwdrivers. Or maybe there’s a special person in your life, and how great would it be to send them a love letter in a glass? The drink that becomes their usual because you make it, and you make it best. There are countless reasons for a tidy, tasty, two-ingredient cocktail, and I’m here for you, to make all those moments, big and small, more delicious and special.

The experienced cocktail maker, too, can find value here. Treat this book like an invitation to explore a way of bartending at home where the ingredients are allowed to shine. You will find some classic cocktails you’ve perhaps never tried before, and new originals that get your own creative juices flowing. Many of the drinks in this book follow a template—spirit plus vermouth, for example, the basis for the Martini. You can take that template and go in so many directions, and I have given lots of prompts on how to adapt and enhance drinks with add-ons and modifications.

This book gives guidance on setting up a home bar, selecting from the dizzying array of products available, and building up a repertoire of cocktails you can make on the spot—a handy bit of proficiency when, say, you want to unwind on a weeknight or friends pop over for an impromptu dinner. The recipes collected here are easy to learn and remember, by design.

My goal for you is to get comfortable with the techniques, while at the same time introducing you to the wide variety and unprecedented quality of liquid resources available to today’s home bartenders. Beer and wine will make appearances. We’ll play a little loose with the rules.

Some cocktails are straightforward, where the ingredients are available at stores and ready to pour right out of their vessel and into yours. If meal prep for you means delivery apps and making reservations, don’t worry: the culinary techniques involved in creating cocktail ingredients are easy to learn and execute. Owing to their harmonizing powers, the drinks in this book are grouped by the moods and occasions they suit. For example, wishing for something breezy like a Sunday afternoon? Try a Bright Sip (pages 28–47). Need to tie off a tough day? Enlist a Weeknightcap (pages 48–67). To upgrade a sunlit afternoon into a full-blown holiday, reach for snackable, sessionable cocktails that make up the section called Drinking & Nibbling (pages 68–83).

As a student of cocktails for the past twenty years, cocktail bars have been my classroom. When I’m sitting across from a glinting back bar stocked with bottles, I naturally peruse the labels, looking for ones I don’t recognize. I read drink menus the same way. Words I don’t know spark a conversation, an opportunity to learn (and sample) something new. This adventure has led me to meet and befriend passionate and creative people. It’s given me inspiration to write. It colors the way I travel. My takeaway has been, there’s excitement and opportunity in the unfamiliar. I encourage you to seek out the drink you least expect to like. You can’t appreciate a duet only by considering its ingredients alone.