In the spirit of Craddock’s
The Savoy Cocktail Book, my first book,
The PDT Cocktail Book, was a snapshot of what I hope many will fondly recall as a seminal moment in cocktail history. It’s a recipe book first and foremost, documenting the popular ingredients and proportions used to make classic and contemporary cocktails at the time of its publication.
In this book, instead of focusing on a particular time and place, I’ve panned back to address a much more layered subject: bartending itself. I’ll begin with a chapter on the history of the American cocktail, from seventeenth-and eighteenth-century punch to the neoclassical cocktails we drink today. From there, I move onto chapters on bar design, tools and techniques, service, and hospitality. This book does include cocktail recipes—one hundred total, which include classics and my own signatures—plus spirits primers to help stock your bar. Each recipe includes information on the origin of the drink, the “logic” behind why it works, and “hacks” for the curious bartender.
Throughout the book you’ll find insights from more than fifty friends, colleagues, and mentors who’ve shaped my views of the craft of bartending. I’ve included quotes from my former employers, Audrey Saunders and Jimmy Bradley, colleagues like Jeff Bell and Don Lee, icons like Dale DeGroff and David Wondrich, lifelong friends like Brian Bartels and my brother Peter, and spirits producers like Hans Reisetbauer and Beppe Musso. I hope that you’ll be as inspired by them as I have been.
I didn’t learn how to tend bar from reading books. Tending bar is mastered through thousands of hours spent watching, listening, and learning from your colleagues and guests. That said, I hope this book will foster dialogue about how and why we tend bar. Some of my most respected colleagues and friends (even those featured in the book’s portraits) may disagree with the philosophy and practices I’ve outlined here—so I’m sincerely eager for them to weigh in on the conversation. There are many ways to succeed in the bar business; this is mine.
Copyright © 2017 by Jim Meehan. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
