Rare Book Review: Beverages De Luxe

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Rare Book Review: Beverages De Luxe

Unread postby bourbonv » Tue Dec 25, 2007 12:11 pm

Beverages De Luxe. Washburne, Geo.R. and Stanley Bronner, Editors. Louisville, Ky.: The Wine and Spirit Bulletin, 1911. Forward, Illustrations.

This book is actually a collection of essays done by individual authors. The essays tend to be mostly about wines, but there are essays on other spirits and beer as well. The booklet is aimed at the bar owner. Its goal seems to be the eductation of the bar owner / bartender on the nature of the different types of alcohol and other usefull bits of information suchas glassware styles and managing a wine cellar. There is also an essay on cocktails and many cocktail recipes.

The essays that make this book valuable to the American Whiskey library are the essays written by Geo. Garvin Brown of Brown-Forman on Bourbon and A. M. Hanler of the Hamburger Distillery Co. on Rye Whiskey. Neither writer offers anything in the form of a description of what their product tasted like, but instead describe its heritage and use. This leads into the later essays on cocktails and the recipes to be found in the back of the book.

The last half of the book is dedicated to cocktail recipes. There are illustrations of different bottles of whiskey and other spirits on one page while the opposite page has the name of a famous tavern or bar with some of its recipes for cocktails. They include recipes for egg nogs, nint juleps and other standard cocktails as well as some other lesser known cocktails such as the "Easter Tonic", "Clover-leaf cocktail", "Bull's Eyer Cup", "Green Lizard" and "Poop Fizz".

This is a valuable addition to a spirits library. The essays are informative and entertaining. The cocktail recipes are always fun and informative. It is a very good slice of history for drinking one hundred years ago.

There is a copy of this book at the Oscar Getz Museum of Whiskey History.
Mike Veach
"Our people live almost exclusively on whiskey" - E H Taylor, Jr. 25 April 1873
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