It's safe to say that classic cocktails are now an official trend and I don't mean just with mixologists and Rachel Maddow.
In addition to new bars with old-school drinks like The Phoenix Jazz Club and Firefly Lounge recently opening, publishers are now getting in the act.
The God of classic cocktails was a 19th Century bartender named Jerry Thomas, better known as the Professor. He's the person on the cover and at the heart of David Wondrich's book Imbibe which I mentioned a week ago in a post about Tom Collins.
While Thomas was known as a flashy bartender -- "the Jupiter Olympus of the bar," Wondrich calls him -- he became a nationally known figure for publishing several books, including the first book on cocktail recipes published in America: 1862's How to Mix Drinks or The Bon Vivant's Companion: The Bartender's Guide was a bombshell.
It's difficult to imagine now, but back then bartenders
had a code of secrecy akin to what magicians have today. Old recipes
were guarded carefully and new ones even more so. For whatever reason
(Wondrich hints at a mixture of
money problems and bills to pay), Thomas not only gave away the secrets to all his
recipes but other bartenders' recipes as well. Rather than be
villified, Thomas was deemed a hero, the man who opened bartending to
everyone.
How to Mix Drinks would stay in print until 1897, long after
Thomas' death. Now it's been republished -- not once, not twice, but
three times in the past year. There's the original cover version, the David Wondrich-approved version and the soon-to-be-released updated paperback version.
None of the
three are by the same publisher. That's when it hit me --
the copyright has expired on all of Jerry Thomas' books, and they're now in
the public domain.
That means anyone can reprint them and sure enough, after several minutes of searching I found How to Mix Drinks online. It's available and completely categorized at the Web site Art of Drink. You may not get the same nostalgic feeling reading the book online but the money saved is just extra money for booze.
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