Vintage Spirits & Forgotten Cocktails: From the Alamagoozlum Cocktail to the Zombie 80 Rediscovered Recipes and the Stories Behind Them

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Summary: Great recipes, can be made at home
Review: Fascinating book! I have many books on vintage cocktails. I also recommend books by Paul Harrington and the Regans. The books complement one another. Vintage Spirits & Forgotten Cocktails is fascinating to read. Recipes for drinks are provided, but also included is their history, the availability and source of ingredients, and the author's opinion on the drink. Enough information is provided to actually make these drinks and know what to expect. Thus far I've successfully mixed Zombies and Aviations. I would have bought this book just for the original Zombie recipe, which is included with lots of detail. The book is beautifully photographed, replete with great pictures of ephemera from cocktail's golden age. Did I mention the great discussion of orange bitters and of Applejack? Get the book and experience some great cocktails.

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Summary: the Best Bar None
Review: I have used or seen a lot of bar guides and cocktail recipe books over the years, and Doctor Cocktail's book is the best - it has all the great drinks and lots of amazing cocktails that have been lost to history. It's full of anecdotes and history, and jammed with great color photos of the cocktails, old labels, bottles, historic cocktail books - you name it. Also included is a helpful list of suppliers for some of the more obscure ingredients. It's well written and funny, so you'll want to read it cover to cover even if you never make a single cocktail, but I guarantee you'll want to - try the 20th Century - in my opinion, one of the greatest lost cocktails of all time. Toss out that old bar guide - here's to the only cocktail book you'll ever need.

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Summary: Refreshing to Read as well as to Drink
Review: I read this book in one sitting. Dr. Cocktail's incredibly thorough research and attention to detail are both at once obvious, but that's not where the true beauty of this book lies. It lies in the passion Haigh has for his subject. You can just about taste it as you read this delightful compendium of cocktails. This is the most refreshing cocktail book I've read in many, many years. I want volume 2, and I want it NOW!

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Summary: Hand Me That Corpse Reviver #2
Review: I'm not in any way, shape or form a cocktail expert, unlike the two reviewers ahead of me, Messrs. Regan and Hess, and neither am I also a completely disinterested reviewer, as I'm part of the author's immense social circle. All that being so, however, let me say that this is a charming book--an ideal stocking stuffer for those doing early Christmas shopping (I'm buying several copies for several stockings) for many of one's friends.

The presentation of the drinks with handsome photographs (showing off the author's immense glassware collection as well as period paraphernalia) is nicely done. The recipes are, of course, wonderful and the history of each is explicated in a lively way. The brief "Drink Notes" section that follows many of the recipes is thoughtful. Best of all, the writing sounds so much like my friend talking that it conjures for the reader a literate, observant, sophisticated and eager to please companion with a weakness for showmanship--voila! the perfect drinking companion.

An example of this style is found on page 54 under the picture of an innocuous slightly frou-frou drink which Dr. Cocktail calls "The Secret Cocktail." This isn't really its name, which Cocktail tells us he is hiding until the recipe is given and some interesting historical background also presented. The cocktail which dares not speak its name is described thus: "Just so you know, the real name of this drink is not the Secret Cocktail. I will, eventually, reveal its rightful title, but be forewarned, it has two characteristics that scare people to death: again, [as discussed in a recipe given on the preceding page] the dreaded egg and the drink name--it is enough to send virtually all men and most women running away screaming. This is a forgotten cocktail in the truest sense, but it is cloaked in familiarity because you can walk into virtually any bar and order one, if you have a mind to, but they will all be wrong, incorrect, not even close. ALL of them."

The writing is so personable that a non-cocktailian such as myself (and presumably, most readers) can't help but feel interested and relaxed in this slightly arcane world. My only criticism is that the type is just a little small for my middle-aged eyes, but then, the photos are spectacular, so that's all right. This is a book that one can both read and use with distinct enjoyment.

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Summary: The Secrets of the Cocktail
Review: The cocktail is far more then just booze sloshed into a glass. It is culture, history, cuisine, and within it can be found the muse that inspires us to dream. Within the pages of "Vintage Spirits & Forgotten Cocktails" we can clearly see the inspiration that Ted "Dr. Cocktail" Haigh found from his own personal muse.

This book is clearly not just "yet another" volume of random recipes, it is instead a carefully architected portfolio that provides a unique insight into this thing we call a "cocktail". The recipes presented throughout this book are both obscure and amazing. A few of them, such as the French 75, Aviation, Derby, and Pegu Club are libations that may periodically find their way onto a cocktail menu here and there, but others, such as the Jupiter, Modernista, Corpse Reviver #2, and Income Tax are ones you'd be hard pressed to find a bartender who had heard of them, much less knew how to make one. But that is not to say that they deserve this obscurity. Each of the recipes presented in this book are wonderful examples of the culinary capabilities hidden within the cocktail.

The recipes aren't the only things that are amazing within this book. Throughout, you will find wonderful historic insights, from one of the few people truly capable of providing them, that will open your eyes to what the cocktail once was, and with luck could eventually become again. There are also beautiful pictures, of not only the cocktails themselves, but also of historically significant books, bottles, and other related miscellanea.

If you are a bartender who takes pride in your craft, then this book will provide you with a wealth of new recipes that you can use to expand your repertoire. If you are a home mixologist, then this book will open up a whole new landscape for you to discover. The secret adventure, awaits.

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Summary: Excellent urban archeology
Review: This book comes along like a cocktail guide, but really is a fascinating journey into past lifestyle pleasures and obsessions that are long forgotten, illustrated with rare visual ephemera.

The science of urban archeology has another subcategory now: Cocktail archeology. Jeff Berry and his Polynesian potion research has given us two fine volumes of almost extinct Tiki lounge libations and the way they are to be prepared correctly ("The Grog Log" and "Intoxica"), and now Ted Haigh expands the field to classic cocktail history.

Ted's research of decades has been distilled into this handy little tome, resulting in a powerful concoction of recipes and stories from the golden age of mixology.
The author never was a bartender, but an ardent customer and a fan. In years of experimentation and alcohol alchemy he has honed his sensibilities to determine which quality cocktails deserve to be resurrected and which are better left forgotten. Yet his superior knowledge never tempts him to take an esoteric stance, his language and instructions are easy to follow, even for the amateur who has just gotten his first whiff of the allure that exudes from cocktail culture.

The recipes do not contain any ingredients that are impossible to get, and a resource guide in the back lists the suppliers of those cocktail components not quite available in your neighborhood market.

Thus, finally, after being unremembered for too many years, a taste bud teaser like the Monkey Gland can be enjoyed again, because it does not, as rumor had it, actually contain the supposed virility booster of animal origin, but a rare spirit that has recently enjoyed a revival, the distillation of Herbsaint, Absinth. To create a cocktail with Absinth that tones it's distinct taste down to a faint pleasurable sensation is not easy, but the Monkey Gland achieves this task admirably when the steps delineated in "Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails" are followed correctly.

I sincerely hope that this fine work will not only be used to inspire the home bar aficionado, but also to enrich the menus of quality cocktail bars around the world.


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Summary: Don't Call This A Recipe Book.
Review: This is a coctail recipe book in the same sense that Robert Kaplan's Balkan Ghosts is a travel guide. Ted Haigh really has everything working here. The book is beautiful to look at, it contains stuff you won't find anywhere else, and the writing is terrific. The cultural history is fascinating and the book as an object is a work of art. What more could you ask?