My Round:

It's been a long time coming, but finally there's a book about creating cocktails that gets the mix just right

The last time I saw Dale DeGroff, the New York bartender commonly viewed in the USA as the greatest practitioner of his craft, he handed me one of the first copies of his new book. His only book, to be precise. While I was thumbing through it, a mutual friend and colleague asked: "Why has it taken him so long to write a book?" I replied: "Because it took him that long to figure out what he really wanted to say." Having now read The Craft of Cocktail cover to cover, rather than just glancing at it while sipping a Tequila Sunrise, I would like to expand on that reply.

If 80 per cent of cookbooks are useful only as landfill, that figure rises to 96 per cent for cocktail recipe books. Ever since cocktails became cool, nimble, unknowing publishers have been rushing to fill the shelves with over-designed and under-written volumes. Their contents, typically, comprise a few recipes, semi-legibly laid out against decorative but unilluminating photographs. Some of these silly books come from bartenders with many years of experience. Others come from relative newcomers, and these are the worst of all. It is almost impossible for a young bartender, however well trained and discerning, to write a really good cocktail book.

Why? Because he or she has not had the years of experience needed – thousands of hours spent mixing, tasting, throwing away, mixing again – to form a fully developed bartender's brain. And it's not just the mixing and tasting. It's the thinking about alcohol and its permutations, and the extensive travelling and schmoozing needed to find out what other bartenders do, both good and bad. Don't get me wrong: you can be a fantastic bartender at age 27. You're simply unlikely to write a good cocktail recipe book.

DeGroff made the wise decision to wait before going into print, until he had all the attainments lacking in the dismal 96 per cent. His book contains around 500 recipes, which makes it a truly useful guide for people who simply want lots and lots of drinks they might try making. But there's more here than bulk. DeGroff is strong on basics, such as ice and equipment; this strength is reinforced by good instructional photos. He shows that all cocktails are built up from fundamental principles rather than the whim of one under-instructed guy messing around with bottles while the boss is out shopping. He is amusing and fascinating on cocktail history, and his recipes reflect the influence of his personal collection of hundreds of old recipe books. This is the only cocktail book I know of that gives a recipe described by Mark Twain.

Also admirable is DeGroff's marking of the recipes that are original to him, and scrupulously crediting the inventors of those that are not. Failure to credit is another common trait of the bad cocktail books. I note with interest, for instance, that DeGroff rightly attributes the Bramble to Dick Bradsell, whom he rightly calls the UK's leading bartender.

No book this big and ambitious can succeed in being all things to all cocktail-fiends. I would have welcomed a more thorough explanation of some points of historical development, and the discussions of currently dominant brands are cursory. More seriously, for readers on this side of the Atlantic, the orientation and measures are exclusively American. As is the book itself. Published by Clarkson Potter in the USA, it is available here only – for the moment – via Amazon. US list price: $35. Amazon price: around £20. It'll take a few weeks to arrive, but that's nothing compared with the years of enlightenment you will get out of it. Or with the years it took DeGroff to ponder, mix and taste before he'd even set pen to paper. Some things are worth waiting for.