Boozy Book Reviews: 5 Most Anticipated Spring 2023 Drinks Books
By my count, there are more than twenty new drink books being released in the first three months of 2023. Below are the ones I’m most looking forward to.
1. Wild Drinks: The New Old World of Small-Batch Brews, Ferments and Infusions by Sharon Flynn
We live during a very exciting new era of attention to old-world fermentation techniques, with everyone from work-from-home cooks to some of the world’s top bartenders getting on board. Sharon Flynn is one of the leaders of this new movement, having studied fermentation techniques over 20 years while living in Malaysia, Japan, the US and Europe, and launching her business The Fermentary that produces sauerkraut and kimchi for sale and hosts fermenting workshops in Victoria, Australia.
Wild Drinks is a book on infusing, brewing and fermenting everything from mead to kombucha to cider to kvass. It promises more than 60 recipes including those of drinks including wild beer, apple cider, country wine, wild soda, water kefir, kombucha, ginger beer, and fruit vinegars. Plus, there is a chapter on how to use fermentation byproducts like kimchi pancakes and nettle risotto.
2. The Essential Tequila & Mezcal Companion: How to Select, Collect & Savor Agave Spirits by Tess Rose Lampert
After years of little information on mezcal and very little accurate information on tequila in book form, we’ve entered a new era of abundant published works on agave. Which will be the ones we turn to over and over? We’ll have to wait and see if this makes the list.
This new guide promises a lot: 300 tasting notes, producer profiles, history and production of agave spirits, tips on stocking a home bar and organizing a tasting, and more than 30 cocktail recipes. The book comes from cannabis and agave professional Tess Rose Lampert, who writes about the category and hosts private events.
Technically this book came out at the end of 2022, but it seems that reviewers only received their copies this January, so it counts as a 2023 release to me. The 600-plus page book is a compendium of both writing and recipes from cocktail coverage in the New York Times. There are short articles from writers including Toby Cecchini, Eric Asimov, Rosie Schaap, Robert Simonson, and William Grimes, with one or more recipes following each piece, plus interviews with ten bartenders like Ivy Mix of Leyenda in Brooklyn, Sother Teague of Amor y Amargo in Manhattan.
The book is organized into sections on variations of classics like the Martini, Manhattan, Old Fashioned, and Negroni, and in this new edition of the book there are 140 new recipes including ones featuring vermouth, and non-alcoholic cocktails. Upon first browse of my review copy, I'm enjoying the mix of writing and recipes every few pages in this book as opposed to the standard of one big block of text at the beginning and then sparsely introduced recipes over the remaining pages.
4. The Maison Premiere Almanac: Cocktails, Oysters, Absinthe, and Other Essential Nutrients for the Sensualist, Aesthete, and Flaneur by Joshua Boissy, Krystof Zizka, Jordan Mackay, and William Elliott
With the publication of the Cure cocktail book last year, I thought we’d reached the end of the cocktail books from the great cocktail bars of the 2010s, but one more snuck in onto my to-read list. Maison Premiere has long been known as a Brooklyn bar for cocktails (specifically ones with absinthe) and oysters in the New Orleans style. The book from the bar promises 90 drink recipes, primers on absinthe, and tutorials on oysters in a format that’s a “visually arresting objet d’art that will make a perfect addition to any bookshelf.”
5. The New French Wine: Redefining the World's Greatest Wine Culture by Jon Bonné
Collector-tempting wine and spirits book boxed sets are becoming increasingly common, with recent ones on Champagne and bourbon hitting the market, both also from the publisher Ten Speed Press. This forthcoming two-volume box set on French wine by former San Francisco Chronicle wine editor Jon Bonné joins them, coming in at 864 pages all together.
The first book promises to be an overview of each wine region within France, and the second a “comprehensive reference guide to the producers and their wine.” The description on the author’s website frames the book as coming at a time of great change for the category. “The legendary appellations are being reconceived; places like Champagne and Beaujolais are in the midst of positive revolution, while others like St. Emilion and Vouvray face upheaval and sometimes outright revolt. Many naturalist winemakers have rejected the rules entirely and make their wine outside the system, their wines appreciated by a generation keen to reject the ways of the old. After decades of reliance on chemically intensive farming, the country’s best winemakers now adhere to organic and biodynamic farming — but are often stymied by neighbors, and a government still stuck in the old ways.”