Camper English has a piece in the San Francisco Chronicle today on collectible cocktail books titled Bartenders shake and stir their way through cocktail history.
English, who writes the booze blog Alcademics talks with Josey Packard, a bartender at Alembic in the Upper Haight who also studies recipe history and collector John Burton, owner and instructor of the Bartenders’ School of Santa Rosa, about their interest in older cocktail books
Highlights:
-The first known cocktail book is “How to Mix Drinks” by Jerry Thomas and was published 1862.
–“Because of their proximity to sticky liquids, well-used cocktail books often don’t hold up over time, which may be why vintage cocktail books from the 1860s through the 1940s are rare and highly collectible.”
–In addition to their recipes or desirability to collectors “Modern cocktail enthusiasts use them to rediscover how and what people were drinking when the books were written, what bar life was like in the beginning of the last century, and the history of bartending as a profession.”
Cheers!