The library
Where drinks came from, told from the record. Where the record runs out and the stories begin, we say so.
The professional bar · 1830 to 1900
In 1862 a showman from Sackets Harbor published the first American book of drink recipes. Twenty years later a Prussian rival wrote the first manual on how to run a bar. Between them they made bartending a profession.
5 min read · 9 sources
The grand hotel bar · 1893 to 1939
Between the 1890s and the 1930s the grand hotel bar became the cocktail's finishing school: the Waldorf's brass rail, the Savoy under Ada Coleman and Harry Craddock, the Ritz in Paris, the Long Bar at Raffles.
6 min read · 11 sources
The tiki era · 1934 to 1980
A Hollywood bar in 1934, an Oakland rival, a Mai Tai with two fathers and a Puerto Rican hotel drink: the tropical cocktail was an American invention, and the people whose islands it borrowed have something to say about it.
6 min read · 9 sources
The revival · 1987 to 2015
In the late 1980s a New York bartender was told to find a copy of Jerry Thomas. By 2005 New York had a hidden bar with house rules, a gin temple in SoHo and a generation that squeezed its own juice. How the classics came back.
6 min read · 10 sources