Artisanal Cocktails: Drinks Inspired by the Seasons from the Bar at Cyrus (Hardcover)

by Scott Beattie (Author), Sara Remington (Photographer)
Key Phrases: tall collins glass, safflower threads, white verjuice, Cock'n Bull, Ultimate Pickling Liquid, Green Chartreuse (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
As cocktail culture becomes ever more popular, mixed drinks grow ever more refined and complex. Beattie, barmaster for Cyrus Restaurant in the Sonoma wine country, embraces this trend with 50 recipes that are rich in rare fruits, fresh herbs and dried spices. Pickled hearts of palm and a chili pepper spice up the rum drink called a Hot Indian Date, and edible flowers color several concoctions such as the Sunny and Dry, which calls for black-eyed Susan petals, spearmint leaves, cucumber and gin. Even the mainstay simple syrup gets the treatment. Anise, fennel seed, cinnamon, cloves and peppercorns are blended in to create Chinese five-spice syrup. As the subtitle suggests, the recipes are grouped by season. Theoretically, this is a fine approach, but Beattie is a pure Californian. His view of winter is that it's gray and rainy and that California is blessed with so much wonderful citrus. Such warm-weather mentality perhaps explains why the margarita is a winter drink, the mint julep forgoes Derby Day for summer, and soul-warming options like the Manhattan and hot buttered rum turn up in the spring and fall, respectively. (Nov.)
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Product Description
Inspired by the bounty of Sonoma County's organic farms and local distilleries, Scott Beattie shakes up the cocktail world with his extreme twists on classic bar fare. In ARTISANAL COCKTAILS, Beattie reveals his intense attention to detail and technique with a collection of visually stunning and astonishingly tasty drinks made with top-shelf spirits, fresh-squeezed juices, and just-picked herbs and flowers. In creatively named recipes such as Meyer Beautiful (My, You're Beautiful), Hot Indian Date, and the Grapes of Roth, Beattie combines flavors and aesthetics as meticulously as a chef to produce party-worthy concoctions guests won't soon forget.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Ten Speed Press; illustrated edition edition (November 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1580089216
• ISBN-13: 978-1580089210
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 8.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #117,056 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Nice read, but useless, December 7, 2008

By	John D. Hearn - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Before my review, I need to establish some credibility. I have been making classic cocktails as a hobby for several years now. I have made all the drinks in Ted Haigh's Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails and am presently working my way through Beachbum Berry's tiki books. My liquor cabinet has about 60 different bottles of booze (not counting various syrups, bitters, and other mixers) and grows at a steady rate of 2 to 3 new ingredients per month. I routinely order products I cannot find in my state. I blog about cocktails, participate in forums and discussion panels about cocktails, and even get promotional bottles of alcohol in the mail. (Actually, I received a promotional copy of the book in question.) I regularly host cocktail parties and I frequently make my own syrups, liqueurs, etc. I certainly don't consider myself the same caliber mixologist as the book author, but think it is fair to say I am undaunted by complicated drink recipes or esoteric ingredients. I'm on the aggressive side of amateur hobbyist.

Now, about the book: all the drinks are all lovely, and they look delicious. The photography was gorgeous, and the reading was relatively interesting. Were I visiting Cyrus, I would be happy to order any of these cocktails. But with that said, I will probably never make any of the cocktails in this book. I'm simply not interested in visiting a florist for a bouquet of edible flowers, or traveling a hundred miles to track down Rangpur limes or any other extremely perishable single-use ingredient for the purpose of making one cocktail that will be consumed inside of 10 minutes. If you happen to live somewhere that Meyer lemons, dianthus and borage flowers, olallieberries, and verbana leaves are readily available, more power to you. Maybe this book is for you. For the rest of us, this is a book that will spend its life on the coffee table, or under it, but not at the bar.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's not just about recipes, it's about techniques, November 19, 2008

By	Camper English "Author of Party Like a Rock S... (san francisco, ca United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Beattie's drinks take the hyper-local approach: The ones he makes at the bar at Cyrus largely come from ingredients sourced from neighbors' gardens and citrus trees. Those recipes are included in the book. But what if you don't live in California? That's when the technique tips come in handy. Beattie gives instruction on how to make spiced syrups, candied citrus peels, foams, rims, and pickled fruits and vegetables. You won't find those in other cocktail books. Not only does this book with its recipes instruct people to make the ultimate West Coast cocktails, its advice will help people around the country develop hyper-local drinks with different local produce sourced wherever they are.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful but not as useful as hoped for the home mixologist, December 30, 2008

By	D. King (Berkeley, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is fun to read, and full of inspiring photographs, and I have no doubt that Cyrus's bar is wonderful; I want to go. But as someone who makes many home-infused vodkas and has half a dozen cocktail books, I don't find the book as useful as I'd expected. The takes on classics like the mint julep and the negroni don't add much. Other recipes call for blood orange-infused vodka and lemon-infused vodka, and then include blood orange juice and lemon juice. There's duplication of effort that's fine when you have all the infused vodkas handy, but there's no need for them most of the time. The organization of the book is also unhelpful, put together like something you're supposed to read like a book rather than refer to. Grouping simple syrups, foam techniques, and other basics instead of scattering them through the text would have made it more user friendly over time. All in all, there aren't that many recipes. If breadth had been added to take this beyond a reproduction of Cyrus's cocktail menu and make it an expansive playbook and playground of fanciful libations, it could have been a classic. I hope he'll revise this into that book.