Imbibe!: From Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash, a Salute in Stories and Drinks to "Professor" Jerry Thomas, Pioneer of the American Bar Featuringthe ... and a Selection of New Drinks Contributed in [Hardcover]

David Wondrich (Author), Dale DeGroff (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 6, 2007

A lively, historically informed, and definitive guide to classic American cocktails.

Cocktail writer and historian David Wondrich presents the colorful, little-known history of classic American drinks-and the ultimate mixologist's guide-in this engaging homage to Jerry Thomas, father of the American bar.

Wondrich reveals never-before-published details and stories about this larger- than-life nineteenth-century figure, along with definitive recipes for 100 punches, cocktails, sours, fizzes, toddies, slings, and other essential drinks, plus twenty new recipes from today's top mixologists, created exclusively for this book.

This colorful and good-humored volume is a mustread for anyone who appreciates the timeless appeal of a well-made drink-and the uniquely American history behind it.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

cofounder of the Museum of the American Cocktail, Wondrich delivers a well-researched chronicle of Professor Jerry Thomas's life and times as late 19th-century bartender extraordinaire. From gold rush saloons in San Francisco to last calls in lower Manhattan, Thomas collected material for The Bartender's Guide, the seminal 1862 collection of cocktail recipes. Wondrich offers up 100 classic cocktails from Thomas's guide and other period sources, along with 16 new drinks that recall those golden days. Old-time tools, ingredients and measurements are conveniently converted to their contemporary equivalents, as julep strainers and toddy sticks are hard to come by. Fortunately, many of the concoctions transcend time in their simplicity. General Harrison's Egg Nogg, for example, calls for hard cider, sugar, an egg and some lumps of ice. For the newly minted offerings, Julie Reiner of New York's Flatiron Lounge conjures up a Cherry Smash that includes brandied cherries, cognac and Orange Curaçao, and Wondrich weighs in with a glass of rye, simple syrup and Angostura bitters, which he calls a Tombstone. The result is a lovely homage to Thomas's indomitable spirits. B&w illus. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

“Winner, James Beard Foundation Award 2008, Best Book About Wine and Spirits”

"{Jerry} Thomas finally gets his due in Imbibe!....Mr. Wondrich puts the drinks in context, with their ingredients explained, their measurements accurately indicated, and their place in the overall cocktail scheme clearly mapped out. At the same time, Thomas himself appears, for the first time, as a living presence: a devotee of bare-knuckle prize fights, a flashy dresser fond of kid gloves, an art collector, a restless traveler usually carrying a fat wad of bank notes and a gold Parisian watch. A player, in short."
--William Grimes, The New York Times

"This book will leave you shaken and, I hope, stirred. Wondrich, one of the top spirits writers in the country, delves into the rich and fascinating history of mixology in America."
--USA Today

"Imbibe brings back the delicious forgotten cocktails created by a pioneering American bon vivant....This book is a model for food history writing....{Wondrich is} always an enjoyable writer, curious, eager, mildly opinionated and with a taste for the amusing."
--The Los Angeles Times

"Cocktail connoisseurs and history buffs will find this book an essential addition to their reference libraries." --The San Francisco Chronicle

"Wondrich offers what amounts to a history of industrial-age America writ in booze, covering everything from punches, fizzes, and sours to toddies, slings, and juleps."
--Saveur, Top Ten Reads

"How and why America rose to world preeminence in mixology is explained zestfully in Imbibe!."
--Forbes

"With Imbibe!, David Wondrich's biography of 19-century mixologist Jerry Thomas, cocktails do the time warp."
--New York Daily News

"Wondrich delivers a well-researched chronicle of "Professor" Jerry Thomas's life and times as late 19th-century bartender extraordinaire...a lovely homage to Thomas's indomitable spirits."
--Publishers Weekly

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Perigee Trade (November 6, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0399532870
• ISBN-13: 978-0399532870
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #13,736 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #10 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Drinks & Beverages > Bartending
  • #22 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Gastronomy > History

More About the Author

David Wondrich was born on the banks of the Monongahela and raised mostly in suburban New York City. After working as a house painter, a mattress stuffer, messenger, clerk and process server for a mob lawyer, bass player in more bands than he can count and a dozen other things, he settled down and earned a doctorate in Comparative Literature, specializing in Latin scientific poetry. That led to a job as an English professor, which he didn't like. What he did like was writing about jazz and ragtime for the Village Voice and the New York Times and about cocktails for Esquire, a job he began in 1999 and is still happily performing today. Imbibe, his 2007 tribute to Professor Jerry Thomas, has become an essential text for bartenders and cocktail geeks alike. It is the first cocktail book to win a James Beard award.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nobody Does it Better, November 25, 2007

By 

Gary Regan (New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Imbibe!: From Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash, a Salute in Stories and Drinks to "Professor" Jerry Thomas, Pioneer of the American Bar Featuringthe ... and a Selection of New Drinks Contributed in (Hardcover)

Imbibe is the best book ever written on the subject of cocktails and mixed drinks. Plain and simple. Best Ever.

Not only does Wondrich dispel lots of myths about Jerry Thomas, and many, many cocktails--the birth of the Sazerac, for instance--he does it with such wit, turning phrase after phrase in the manner of a master wordsmith. It's a bloody delightful read.

Buy this book for yourself, and buy this book for anyone and everyone you know. Even if they have no interest in the main subject matter--and what are you doing hanging out with people like that, anyway?--if any of your friends has the slightest interest in American social history they will be absolutely spellbound as they travel back in time with Dave and watch illustrious quaffers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries doing what they did best: Imbibing.

Wondrich also translates recipes from Thomas' books, and from other books of the same period. He takes them to pieces, examines them thoroughly, and puts them back together so that we can sip a taste of the past. Our copy of the book is already splashed with bitters . . .

Wondrich has shown us all how it should be done. Congrats, Dave.

Gary Regan

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Required Reading for any Cocktailian, December 19, 2007

By 

Robert Hess (Lake Forest Park, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Imbibe!: From Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash, a Salute in Stories and Drinks to "Professor" Jerry Thomas, Pioneer of the American Bar Featuringthe ... and a Selection of New Drinks Contributed in (Hardcover)

The cocktail has had a glorious 200 year history, much of which unfortunately has gone unheralded for far too long. Thankfully, one of the most diligent cocktail historians of today's milieu has taken it upon himself to rectify this problem.

Using the illustrious "Jerry Thomas" (famous bartender from the mid 1800's and author of the first known bartenders guide) as a focal point, Mr. Wondrich introduces us to the birth and evolution of the cocktail as well as a variety of other categories of "mixed drinks" from that era. With insightful, and often witty explanations he steps carefully through both the drinks and the attitudes of the time which formed the foundation for all that was to follow.

Cocktail recipe books, which cram as many recipes as possible within their pages, are a dime a dozen. To truly understand the cocktail, whether you are a bartender or bar-attender, requires that you have a grasp of the history which preceded our current landscape. For this reason, this book is perhaps the most important book of its kind, and fills a huge void which has surrounded this topic for virtually its entire history.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What is American for "tour de force"?, November 9, 2007

By 

M. J Noreen - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Imbibe!: From Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash, a Salute in Stories and Drinks to "Professor" Jerry Thomas, Pioneer of the American Bar Featuringthe ... and a Selection of New Drinks Contributed in (Hardcover)

An amazing book... Art, History, English, Cocktails, David Wondrich brings his A game in an incredible amalgam of booze, bonding, and bar-tending. I only wish I had the Aristolochia serpentaria clippings.

I would give this one 10 stars if I could.