James Beard Award winner.

From the authors of the bestselling and genre-defining cocktail book Death & Co, Cocktail Codex is a comprehensive primer on the craft of mixing drinks that employs the authors’ unique root cocktails approach to give drink-makers of every level the tools to understand, execute, and improvise both classic and original cocktails.

There are only six cocktails. So say Alex Day, Nick Fauchald, and David Kaplan, the visionaries behind the seminal craft cocktail bar Death & Co. InCocktail Codex, these experts reveal for the first time their surprisingly simple approach to mastering cocktails - the root recipes, six easily identifiable (and memorizable!) templates that encompassallcocktails - the old-fashioned, martini, daiquiri, sidecar, whisky highball, and flip.

Once you understand the hows and whys of each family, you’ll understand why some cocktails work and others don’t, when to shake and when to stir, what you can omit and what you can substitute when you’re missing ingredients, why you like the drinks you do, and what sorts of drinks you should turn to-or invent-if you want to try something new.