COCKTAIL KINGDOM RELEASES VINTAGE COCKTAIL BOOKS

In its mission to bring seminal drink books back from extinction, Cocktail Kingdom today issues three vintage reprints that reflect key moments in drink history: The first time the Dry Martini recipe was ever published – in the 1904 second-edition of  Frank P. Newman’s American-Bar: English and American Drinks; the first American-published recipe for this same iconic drink, which showed up in 1906 in Louis’ Mixed Drinks by Louis Muckensturm, and the rule-breaking The Home Bartender’s Guide & Song Book by Charlie Roe and Jim Schwenck, published in 1930 while Prohibition was still in full force. Cocktail Kingdom enlisted noted modern-day drink legends Fernando Castellon, Philip Duff, Jeff “Beachbum” Berry and to pen introductions that examine the historical significance of American Bar, Louis’ Mixed Drinks and The Home Bartender’s Guide, respectively.
 
American-Bar: English and American Drinks ($27.95)
First published by Société Française d’Imprimerie et de Librairie
While Newman’s own history is not entirely clear, the barman was among the first to publish a cocktail book in France when American Bar appeared in 1900 in honor of the World’s Fair. Significant for his influence on other noted barmen of his time, including Harry Craddock, who wrote the Savoy Cocktail Book, Newman’s book acknowledges that while the French were the masters of gastronomy, Americans lead the world in mixology. “The books shows how cocktails, or I should probably say American drinks, were first made in Europe,” explains Castellano, a French bartender himself, whose has published three books, including Larousse des Cocktails (2004). While Castellano’s introduction is published in both French and English, the recipes are as Newman wrote them – in French.
 
Louis’ Mixed Drinks with Hints for Care & Serving Wines ($27.95)
First published by H.M. Caldwell Co., Boston
Born in 1878 in Alsace, Muckensturm moved to New York by 1891 and later to Boston by 1897, where he remained until 1918, when he died at just 40 years old in the influenza epidemic. He achieved professional acclaim at Hotel Marliave and published two books in 1906 before opening his own bar, Café Louis in 1908. As detailed by Duff, Muckensturm was better-known as a chef and restaurateur than as a mixologist, yet his book reflects considerable cocktail innovation alongside a world view on wines, with selections from Germany, France, Australia, California, Greece and Cyprus. “Louis cared about drinks, and he was a bit of a cutting-edge dude in that regard, and his care spills over into his writing about food,” states Duff, who cites such recipes as the Marine Cocktail made with glycerine, the Forbidden Fruit, which was served in an inverted grapefruit, and two shaken cocktails – the Massagrand and the Stifferino – each made with strong black coffee, as early incarnations of today’s concoctions. And while Newman’s Dry Martini recipe published in 1904 called for equal parts gin and dry vermouth, Muckensturm adopted one part dry vermouth, two parts gin by 1906. Muckensturm’s book also provides an overview of wine vintages from 1880 to 1905.
 
The Home Bartender’s Guide & Song Book ($27.95)
First published by Experimenter Publishing, Inc.
It may have been against the law to make and sell alcohol in 1930, per the 18th Amendment that went into effect in 1920 and wouldn’t be overturned until 1933, but it wasn’t technically illegal to drink alcohol, making authors Charles Roe and Jim Schwenck veritable provocateurs with the publishing of The Home Bartender’s Guide and Song Book in 1930, 10 years into Prohibition. With what Berry describes in the prelude as a “vaudevillian tone,” the book is “tinged with nostalgia” for the time “when a man could still drink in blissful ignorance of the horrible fate that would befall him in January 16, 1920, when the 18th Amendment went into full effect.” Recipes range from those found in other cocktail manuals to many that have since disappeared – in some cases for good reason, while the songs date back to the fin de siècle era of the Gay Nineties, curated for the authors by Sigmund Spaeth, Ph.D., a Princeton-trained expert in the period, and illustrated by Bob Dean, an early 20th century newspaper cartoonist. As Berry states in closing, the authors “belonged to that side of the souse family who knew how to throw a good party, tell a good story, and enjoy a good drink.”
 
These new releases are available for purchase at www.cocktailkingdom.com, and can be shipped nationally and internationally; shipping rates apply.