The Little Book for Cocktail Lovers

Travel Distilled reviews The Little Book for Cocktail Lovers by Rufus Cavendish, packed with cocktail recipes, ideas, information, trivia and fun!

The Little Book for Cocktail Lovers by Rufus Cavendish will make the ideal stocking-filler Christmas gift for the cocktail lover in your life – or for yourself. It’s a tiny hardback, a little bigger than the average mobile phone, but boy does it pack a lot into its 128 pages!

Cocktail Recipes

The book has 51 cocktail recipes, from the Apple Pie to the Zombie, by wayof all the classics you might want to master: Manhattan, Negroni, Margarita, Mai Tai and Singapore Sling among them. Each recipe takes up a page with a little background to the cocktail too, and a lovely colour photo opposite. So if you want a basic primer on how to make some of the best-known cocktails, and be able to say something about them, this is the book.

Author of Little Book for Cocktail Lovers

So, who is the guy bringing you all these recipes, Rufus Cavendish? I wish I knew, as the book says nothing about him and a Google search reveals dozens and dozens of results… but only for this book. So Rufus will have to remain a man of mystery.

Glasses and Garnishes

After a short Introduction, the book begins with the inevitable section on what the home bartender needs in order to be a proficient cocktail-maker. This covers Essential Equipment, Glasses, Garnishes, and Syrups and Bitters.

Learning the Lingo

Next up is a few pages on Learning the Lingo, for those who need to know what muddling means, the difference between shaking and stirring, and just how much is a ‘dash’ of something?

‘It’s never too early for a cocktail.’ Noel Coward

Get Crafty

Another section teaches you how to up your cocktail-making presentational skills by using things like dried fruit slices, home-made glass charms, paper decorations, and a few other things. Some neat ideas here for that special occasion.

Fun Facts

The section where the actual cocktail recipes appear is broken up by some pages of Fun Facts, like how Prohibition saw a boom in cocktail-making (to mask the gut-rot alcohol that was being produced), and how far back the making of alcohol goes. You could use these to put together a trivia quiz, if you have friends round for cocktails.

Buying The Little Book for Cocktail Lovers

In short, this short book is well worth a look. It would indeed make a great gift, not just for Christmas but for a birthday… or for no reason at all. You can buy it on Amazon.