# Debating the Cocktail Canon
**URL:** https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/debating-the-cocktail-canon/91
**Category:** Cocktail Kingdom Library
**Tags:** plagiarism, writers
**Created:** [April 11, 2019, 1:15pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/debating-the-cocktail-canon/91 "2019-04-11T13:15:04Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@Splificator](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/Splificator)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2019, 6:02pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/debating-the-cocktail-canon/91/41 "2019-04-13T18:02:41Z")
Here’s a question: What was the first book of the cocktail renaissance–not the ones that helped birth it, such as The Craft of the Cocktail, the Joy of Mixology and Vintage Spirits & c., which mostly offered classic recipes, or the ones published in the early 2000s that contained the vodka-based mixology of the '80s and '90s, but rather the first one to offer significant numbers of new drinks based on the classic principles as laid out by DeGroff, Regan, Haigh, and the others?
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### Author:  [@martin](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/martin)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2019, 6:21pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/debating-the-cocktail-canon/91/42 "2019-04-13T18:21:58Z")
> [@Splificator](#):
>
> the first one to offer significant numbers of new drinks based on the classic principles as laid out by DeGroff, Regan, Haigh, and the others
To me, this is the tricky part of the criteria. If it wasn’t one of your books, then perhaps Rogue Cocktails (2009) or PDT (2010)? Would Colin Peter Field’s Ritz book (2003) qualify? Moutone’s aforementioned “Raising the Bar” (2004)? Sismondo’s Mondo Cocktail (2005)? Hollinger’s “Art of the Bar” (2006)? Felton’s “How’s Your Drink?” (2007)?
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### Author:  [@Splificator](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/Splificator)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2019, 6:30pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/debating-the-cocktail-canon/91/43 "2019-04-13T18:30:40Z")
I think it’s tricky too, which is why I asked. Colin Field’s book is a good candidate; I’ll have to dig it up and take a look, although as I recall it’s more a one-off than harbinger of a movement. Mautone’s and Sismondo’s books are others I’ll have to excavate–I keep all my books from that period offsite. My Esquire Drinks would not qualify; my Killer Cocktails might, but I think there were others first. Art of the Bar is definitely an important book, and perhaps the first comprehensive one, but also not first.
Requires further thought.
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### Author:  [@AudreySaunders](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/AudreySaunders)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2019, 6:48pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/debating-the-cocktail-canon/91/44 "2019-04-13T18:48:34Z")
Another that comes to mind is the 2006 Mr. Boston Platinum Edition, edited by Anthony Giglio…which many of us contributed to.
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### Author:  [@martin](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/martin)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2019, 6:49pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/debating-the-cocktail-canon/91/45 "2019-04-13T18:49:15Z")
Good one. We need a copy for the Library.
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### Author:  [@Splificator](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/Splificator)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2019, 6:52pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/debating-the-cocktail-canon/91/46 "2019-04-13T18:52:49Z")
That’s definitely another milestone, but I still feel like I’m forgetting something obvious.
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### Author:  [@cocktaildoodle](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/cocktaildoodle)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2019, 7:10pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/debating-the-cocktail-canon/91/47 "2019-04-13T19:10:20Z")
> [@Splificator](#):
>
> Colin Field’s book is a good candidate; I’ll have to dig it up and take a look, although as I recall it’s more a one-off than harbinger of a movement
He’s got two actually: “The Ritz Paris: Mixing Drinks, A Simple Story” 2010 and “The Cocktails of the Ritz Paris” 2001 French (2003 released in English)
Agreed on the one-off (two-off). They are unique in terms of ingredients and measurement style. He’s a unique guy.
Speaking of a first of the renaissance, there is the Japanese printed “The Bartenders Manual” originally printed in 1987 and then reprinted a few times after that. It is entirely in Japanese and I waded through it with Google Translate a few years ago but I remember it being leaps about bounds ahead of its publish date. 
Worth a read if you can get your hands on it. I have a later printed version so I would be curious what was added to the new version in terms of cocktails and technique. There are actually TONS of Japanese books that pre-date the English books we consider as the modern cocktail era.
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### Author:  [@martin](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/martin)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2019, 8:18pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/debating-the-cocktail-canon/91/48 "2019-04-13T20:18:57Z")
> [@cocktaildoodle](#):
>
> Speaking of a first of the renaissance, there is the Japanese printed “The Bartenders Manual” originally printed in 1987 and then reprinted a few times after that. It is entirely in Japanese and I waded through it with Google Translate a few years ago but I remember it being leaps about bounds ahead of its publish date.
That appears to be the 2011 edition (third edition, perhaps?) by Kazuo Hanasaki who seems to have been a Suntory educator.
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### Author:  [@martin](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/martin)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2019, 12:55am UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/debating-the-cocktail-canon/91/49 "2019-04-14T00:55:45Z")
> [@francois](#):
>
> For Cuba, for example, the Escalante is great because it has the first Presidente, but most of the recipes are uninteresting. The 1930 Club de Cantinero book is _the_ defining book of the Cuban golden age and I can’t take seriously a canon that doesn’t feature it.
>
> For France, however much I love Rip’s Cocktail de Pairs I actually think Requien’s L’heure du cocktail is the key text. This was a time when (some class of) the French started making cocktails at home and Requien’s a celebration of the type of people who were into cocktails. Rip’s extremely valuable for recipes for star bartenders of the time, but it’s mostly a collection of bad drinks invented by ‘famous’ French stars of the time for a ‘celebrity’ competition.
I’ve added these. Feel free to edit/augment.
What about the 1924 Pujol book?
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### Author:  [@francois](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/francois)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2019, 7:09am UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/debating-the-cocktail-canon/91/50 "2019-04-14T07:09:43Z")
I like it. It has the first Mary Pickford (gin!) recipe and a bunch of early Cuban recipe, an Americano (vermouth + bitters) and a Alabama Fizz (or is it a South Side?). I wouldn’t consider it canonical, though. It’s riddled with errors and poorly put together. A test run for the greater work that lies ahead… 😉
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### Author:  [@martin](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/martin)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2019, 4:59pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/debating-the-cocktail-canon/91/51 "2019-04-14T16:59:39Z")
2 posts were split to a new topic: [Cocktail History 101](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/cocktail-history-101/98)
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### Author:  [@ben](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/ben)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2019, 5:48pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/debating-the-cocktail-canon/91/52 "2019-04-14T17:48:39Z")
What do we seek in these books? Are we looking for recipes, for techniques? For context and origins as depicted in the non-recipe text? Simply to put occurrences in proper historical order? Obviously, all of the above. But, thinking about the primary source materials, as the later books do a lot of the digesting for us, they fulfill different roles. Some books are big lists of recipes. Some are themselves works of history. Some are professional memoirs. One or two contain mixed drink versifying. They do different things.
I feel that many books have been included here for their recipes. But on another hand everyone loves Charles H. Baker, which is more an adventure story where every chapter ends with a cocktail instead of a moral. How many of these books are “just recipes” and how many are needed for their extra stuff?
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### Author:  [@RobertHess](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/RobertHess)
#### Post date: [April 15, 2019, 4:51pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/debating-the-cocktail-canon/91/53 "2019-04-15T16:51:04Z")
Regarding Mr. Boston Platinum Edition…
I know that a lot of us were contributors to this, and while I’m not sure exactly what others contributed, I know what I did… When Anthony was originally preparing the normal 2006 red-jacket edition, he reached out to me to find out what I felt could be changed. I basically responded with “where to start!”, and asked for the entire set of recipes, which he promptly sent. I went through every one, and made a variety of modifications, I removed sour mix from everything (except I think the gimlet), removed powdered sugar from everything, redistributed the “Canadian Whisky” cocktails to Bourbon and Rye when appropriate, fixed the basic recipes for several, and added in a bunch of “new” recipes from several of us (Anthony said Mr. Bostons wouldn’t allow him to list attribution).
Also… I told him that what Mr. Boston’s really needed to do, was to step a bit above simply providing a “wad-o-recipes”, and offer a little guidance as to what the “classic” recipes were to provide the neophyte reader with an idea of which drinks they perhaps should start on, as well as some more background information on them. I offered, without being asked, an example set of writeups that I thought would illustrate what I was suggesting.
Skip forward to the publication of the Platinum edition, which I hadn’t even known was coming out, and as I was browsing through the copy, as I was reading the section on Classic Cocktails (which I think is the main difference in the Platinum edition and the normal one?)… and I found myself saying… Hmmm… why does this sound familiar? Then I remembered the writeups I had sent him many months previously. He used them almost verbatim. 😉
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### Author:  [@martin](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/martin)
#### Post date: [April 18, 2019, 2:56pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/debating-the-cocktail-canon/91/54 "2019-04-18T14:56:20Z")
> [@AudreySaunders](#):
>
> A number of books from my list wouldn’t be on today’s main-stream radar, as the current generation of bartenders have little reference to books circa 1970s - pre-2010. But that shouldn’t negate their importance because in all frankness, they acted as foundational precursors to the new books that we are now able to enjoy in print.
I agree. They also flat-out show where we came to be during the near-extinction event. I kind of want to put _Bartender Magazine_ and Cunningham’s _The Bartender’s Black Book_ on there. Is there a definitive reference to disco drinks?
The cocktail has now passed through two periods of rediscovery, and the first one was arguably less extreme, because cocktails marched on ably outside the U.S. during our Prohibition experiment. When we began digging back into them in the 1990s, they’d basically been out of sight for decades except for a smattering of pockets—Japan, Germany, Bilbao, etc.—most of which we (in the U.S.) weren’t aware of until we went looking.
While I’ve already added Conigliaro and Mautone to the list up top, I’ve been away from the others on your list for too long and feel too subjective about them. I need you or somebody else needs to make the case for each.
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### Author:  [@martin](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/martin)
#### Post date: [April 18, 2019, 3:10pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/debating-the-cocktail-canon/91/55 "2019-04-18T15:10:06Z")
> [@ben](#):
>
> I feel that many books have been included here for their recipes. But on another hand everyone loves Charles H. Baker, which is more an adventure story where every chapter ends with a cocktail instead of a moral. How many of these books are “just recipes” and how many are needed for their extra stuff?
We do have a lot of recipe books; some are basically wad-o-drinks books, others more thoughtful and contextual. Some works address professionalism: Harry Johnson, Mahoney, Meehan. A few are theoretical: Jerry Thomas (sort of), Proulx (sort of), Embury, Regan. Almost everything is a trade reference until 1900, and there’s just not that much serious prose until you get to the 1930s. There are some really interesting cultural works that probably belong on this list, such as Gilbert Seldes’ _The Future of Drinking_ (1930).
I’d add that, at the moment, the non-English representation in the list is a complete mess.
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### Author:  [@francois](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/francois)
#### Post date: [April 18, 2019, 4:08pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/debating-the-cocktail-canon/91/56 "2019-04-18T16:08:48Z")
> [@martin](#):
>
> I’d add that, at the moment, the non-English representation in the list is a complete mess.
Other than the Schumann that you have on the list, I’d consider for inclusion a couple of French books.
Fernando Castellon’s Larousse des Cocktails (2004), which was probably way ahead of many English-language books at the time it was published, including on history.
Art Cocktail, by Julien Escot (2006) was also a turning point, featuring many key English drinks from the mid-90’s, and, if memory serves, some Australian too. To this day, French bartenders look for it - and they usually have to pay through the nose to get hold of a copy.
In Spain, the only candidate I can think of would be Javier de las Muelas’ Cocktails & Drinks Book (2009) although I can’t make much of a case for it - it was published when I first moved to Madrid and I can’t really attest to its relevance.
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### Author:  [@martin](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/martin)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2019, 9:04pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/debating-the-cocktail-canon/91/57 "2019-04-20T21:04:47Z")
16 posts were split to a new topic: [Disco drinks, Food Magazine Drinks, Culinary Cocktails](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/disco-drinks-food-magazine-drinks-culinary-cocktails/107)
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### Author:  [@cocktaildoodle](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/cocktaildoodle)
#### Post date: [April 22, 2019, 6:06pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/debating-the-cocktail-canon/91/58 "2019-04-22T18:06:37Z")
> [@martin](#):
>
> There are some really interesting cultural works that probably belong on this list, such as Gilbert Seldes’ _The Future of Drinking_ (1930).
I just got a copy of this a few weeks ago and found it to be fascinating. I don’t believe it has a recipe in it at all.
On the subject of cultural works I could see the likes of _Her Foot is on the Brass Rail_ by Don Marquis, 1935 as well as his “Old Soak” writings being included.
Another book I have always found important is _This Place on Third Avenue_ by John McNulty. Another book that has nothing to do with cocktails yet everything to do with drinking culture at a specific time in a specific city.
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### Author:  [@Splificator](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/Splificator)
#### Post date: [April 23, 2019, 9:27pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/debating-the-cocktail-canon/91/59 "2019-04-23T21:27:49Z")
This is always a problem with lists of drinks books: much of the coolest stuff isn’t actually in drinks books. For me, it would be inconceivable to write about drinks without a thorough knowledge of the works of P. G. Wodehouse and Raymond Chandler, which contain fully-developed aesthetics of drinking, hard boiled in the latter and, I dunno, gentlemanly in the former. McNulty’s book and Don Marquis’s and Joseph Mitchell’s have more to say about drinking in New York than the Hoffman House Bartender’s Guide does, that’s for sure. But then you run into boundary problems: once you’re roping in cultural stuff; convivial literature in general, where do you stop?
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### Author:  [@cocktaildoodle](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/cocktaildoodle)
#### Post date: [April 24, 2019, 3:08pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/debating-the-cocktail-canon/91/60 "2019-04-24T15:08:36Z")
This isn’t an easy undertaking and as @martin has said its “a moving target” and @splificator “where do you stop?” We are coming at this like cocktail people 🙃. Making sure the balance is perfect-- a base of historical recipe books, with a small dose of cultural literature, and a rinse of esoteric necessity.
At this point, for the sake of getting it done, I will bow out and leave this to the professionals-- there are plenty of them here much more learned on the subject than I. This task maybe shouldn’t be open to the public at all? I doubt the Vatican would open a public forum for the arduous task of whether or not to add or remove a book to/from the biblical canon of scripture. Like a patron sitting at the bar, I will stay out of the shaking and stirring.
In the same sentiment, I would almost instead be presented the canon of cocktails ala a cocktail list at a bar and choose whether or not I will personally be ordering from it or going off the menu. Maybe pick the best and brightest of this group to lock down what should be canon privately and then open it up to the public for amendments/adjustments through a voting system or a debate on one work at a time that should be added or removed thus creating the living list. I think this is where my suggestions would be better utilized and easier to promote/defend for ratification. Creating a system for amendments to the canon would be neat…no white smoke needed.
Either way, I have enjoyed rubbing digital elbows and I am excited to see where this goes. I’ll be over in [what we’re drinking](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/what-we-re-drinking/) having a Martini 🍸.
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