Of the plethora of drinks related books available, Jake O'Brien Murphy finds a handful indispensable.

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Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails

I don’t know about you but I find whenever the topic of bartending and academia meet there are two general outcomes. It is either one, so achingly, wallpaper-curlingly dull that it’d be more fun growing kidney stones or it is two, scantily researched, tangentially spurious and academically bone-idle bullshit.

Enter David Wondrich, riding in from the dust bowl on a horse named ‘integrity’. Wondrich represents the third path of thoroughly researched and captivatingly communicated insight . He writes with a sense of implacable studiousness and buoyant good humour. Wondrich’s publications Imbibe and Punch have well-earned, well-thumbed tenure on my bookshelf. His most recent work, The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails, is dizzying in its scope. If, like me, you delight in esoterica and certitude, you’ll love it. It is peerless as a reference book for both its congenial tone and its generosity of fine detail. I wouldn’t be without it. Also see the entry in Alan Davidson’s Oxford Companion to Food for gravy – “in the British Isles and areas culturally influenced by them, is… well, gravy, a term fully comprehensible to those who use it, but something of a mystery in the rest of the world.”

A Sense Of Place

I’m sure we all own some kind of ‘whisky bible 2024’, which is almost always written by some anachronistic fart who’s about as relevant as the Spinning Jenny. They all tend to be an extended catalogue of technically specific information that some people may find interesting. Useful if you’re the kind of person who commits the volumetric capacity of a washback to memory. Short of boring any potential axe-wielding lunatics into a stupor I couldn’t think of a single reason it’d ever come up.

A Sense Of Place is a tall glass of lemonade. Dave Broom dips into the history of scotch whisky, from its Neolithic origins to contemporary innovation. Broom explores the cultural significance of whisky in Scotland and how it’s intertwined with the lives of the people who make and drink it, ultimately reminding the reader that behind each dram is a confluence of human stories. Christina Kernohan’s photography provides as vital an account of these people as the supporting text. Lovely bit of gear all that.

The Fine Art Of Mixing Drinks

David A Embry might not have been a bartender, but The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks is the epitome of the recipe book format. Why? Because Embry gives us, for the first time ever I reckon, an editorialised version of the classics. He spears the hokum and nonsense of the age with an accuracy that still finds the target today. While I don’t agree with everything he laid out, it’s testament enough that Embry remains beverage publishing’s most implacable wanker. 

Noble Rot – Wine from Another Galaxy

Superlative writing that democratises a daunting subject. Can we all agree that the most egregious arseholes are those who think the ability to identify a good glass of wine is a suitable substitute for a terrible personality? Particularly refreshing is the gentle approach the authors take with a series of genuinely practical how-to pieces. ‘How to judge wine’, ‘How to order in a restaurant’ without fear and a ‘Lexicon of usefulness’ that cleaves through any ra ra ra nonsense for functional language. Again, gorgeously illustrated and the photography makes me feel like Jarvis Cocker.

Liquid Intelligence

Dave Arnold seems like the kind of person who maintains a fastidiously colour-coded sock drawer. I appreciate him for that. When I first read Liquid Intelligence 10 years ago it was a genuine revelation. In many ways it still is. Arnold’s book was the beginning of a new system of making drinks – analytic, attentive and empirically driven. Even a decade on it is an invaluable resource for those who want to understand the complexities of clarification, ice and carbonation. It provided the control group for an industry which is often fraught with jiggery-pokery and pseudoscience. In Liquid Intelligence Dave Arnold planted a flag as the standard for systematic, methodical scientific rigour. See also Nathan Myhrvold’s Modernist Cuisine.

Consider the Oyster

Out of all of the other books on this list, Consider the Oyster by MFK Fisher has had the most profound effect on the way I appreciate the world of drinks. There’s been a movement towards the analytic in my lifetime in bars of which I’ve been a happy exponent. However, I think that often comes at the expense of wonder and romance. These are notions that are no doubt harder to quantify than brix but nonetheless as, or more, important.

Leading me to my great declaration of this article – MFK Fisher is, in my mind, the greatest food and drink writer of all time. Consider the Oyster is a book about, well, oysters certainly but it is also a serene meditation on the nature of sustenance and simple human joy of good food and drink. Any time I return to what she had to say, it reminds me there is a quiet but powerful dignity in nourishment. “There is communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk.” Fisher’s is writing that makes you yearn for the buzz of being elbow to elbow with people enjoying life’s pleasures – a fundamental part of the world of good cocktails, and the hospitality industry in general.