An early description of a cocktail as 'a mix of alcoholic drinks with flavouring ingredients' does nothing to convey the alchemy and speak-easy glamour of these elaborate drinks. The cocktail's humble beginnings as a medicinal tonic through the inclusion of botanicals into distilled spirits such as gin and whiskey, accelerates with the ingenuity of bartenders who created the 'classics' the Martini, Manhattan and Old Fashioned in the nineteenth-century, and in the decadence of the Jazz Age and Roaring Twenties.

This book explores the journey that cocktails have made, via China and the Middle East, the Americas and the UK, to arrive at the bespoke menus of today's stylish clubs and bars, complete with descriptions of the myriad ingredients, glassware and paraphernalia that the mixologist has at their disposal.