Books, Blogs, and Other Recommended Writing About Booze
This photo of a stack of books is meant to represent the act of doing a lot of reading.
She told me to read everything.
This encounter reminded me of another conversation I had four years earlier, with another tough lady, a lit professor. We were walking to class together and I was blabbering on about how no English major could ever read everything he or she was assigned. My teacher stopped me right there in the quad and pointed her death stare directly into my pupils. Wagging a copy of Middlemarch in my face, she preceded to set me straight. “Oh. Yes. She. Can,” she admonished. “ And if she is serious, that English major will read it all twice.”
I did not read everything twice, I’m sorry to report. Not even close. But I did get the message. And as a person who covers drinks, I try to read as much good booze writing as I can.
Here is some of the reading I’ve found most useful.
1. Anything by David Wondrich. Esquire writer, author of important booze history books, David Wondrich is an erudite badass who basically invented the modern booze writing genre. It would be worth buying a subscription to Esquire just to read his monthly column. Fortunately, it also happens to be the best magazine in the world. GQ has a monthly booze department too; it’s also good.
2. Local bartender blogs. These are not hard to keep up with, as they post pretty rarely, but they are edifying. Jamie Boudreau, Andrew Bohrer (come to think of it, this post owes a lot to his post about good bartending books), and Mike McSorley all have very fun and informative blogs.
3. Everything that rum expert and contributing Atlantic editor Wayne Curtis writes is definitely required reading.
4. The Tipsy Diaries by Frank Bruni, (formerly the NYT’s restaurant critic), is written in his lovable wry voice, and serves as an excellent reminder not to take the whole thing too seriously.
5. Local writer Paul Clarke has a blog called Cocktail Chronicles that is geared towards the true enthusiast. He also has written, as far as I can tell, just about every long feature Imbibe magazine ever published. I’ve learned something important from each of them.
6. Tan Vinh has written some really good stuff in the Seattle Times including a nice piece on the Last Word, Seattle’s unofficial signature cocktail. He also has a weekly happy hour column that’s very useful.
7. Imbibe.
