David A. Embury's, author of the seminal 1946 cocktail text "The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks", would have celebrated a birthday on November 3rd, were he still alive. He'd be 124, but even in his advanced state he'd surely be stationed at a really good bar somwhere, quizzing the bartender on the details of the drinks he was making and the reasons behind the choice of ingredients, ratios and techniques. Embury compiled the best overall compendium of cocktail knowledge that someone not in the liquor game ever made, certainly. A traveling businessman with an insatiable curiosity for how drinks were made and an apparently unquenchable thirst, Embury stationed himself at bars around the world and drank in knowledge and cocktails with equal avidity. "The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks" was published in 1943 and Embury's steel trap mind and martini-dry wit immediately made it an indispensible guide for both pros and enthusisatic home bartenders.
When I picked the name "Embury" for this site I'd just discovered the book and was quite taken by Embury's voice and the audacity it took for a non-bartender to craft such an in-depth survey of spirits and cocktails. At the time I was a lapsed bartender myself and just getting into writing about cocktail culture, and the man was a real inspiration and the book an invaluable resource. After naming the site I began to apprehend the extent of my audacity--the man is a hero to subsequent generations of cocktail enthusiasts and experts and name-checking him so visible took balls, or a little ignorance in my case. At any rate, once we got rolling it was too late to turn back, and as we prepare to relaunch the site and take it from blog to a properly functioning site, we'd just like to acknowledge the both the man's epic achievement as well as his epic cool, neither of which we pretend to even begin to approach.
We'd also like to direct you to where you can get the book--at Cocktail Kingdom, Greg Boehm's haven for cocktail knowledge, tools, including an assortment of bitters that outflanks even the mighty Kalustyan's. Cocktail Kingdom HQ in the Flatiron District has a room filled with vintage spirits, obscure cocktail implements, all sorts of arcanae and and a collection of archival cocktail books that makes the place a sort of Library of Alexandria of drinks for the drinking set.
The collection of loving reprints of classic cocktails books published under Boehm's Mud Puddle Books imprint is marvelously useful and they are all naturally quite stylish, and "The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks" is the jewel in the crown. (Atlhough my advice is to remove the faithfully reproduced but unexcitng dust jacket and display it with the more vintage looking hard cover.) This edition includes introductions by Robert Hess and Audrey Saunders, and at $29.95 may be the best investment for your home bar you'll ever make.
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