October 4, 2025

Signature Cocktails Turns Two!

Reflections on writing 200 essays, and the day I made a serendipitous cocktail research discovery

Today my “third born”, Signature Cocktails, turns two years old! 

My toddler was already husky at birth, carrying the weight of 200 cocktails from around the world, spanning centuries of history. Phaidon approached me in early 2022 to write the book, which was originally conceived as a drinks companion to the cookbook Signature Dishes That Matter. The idea: to feature cocktails that represent a specific place, event, or person with a traceable origin story plus recipe, and all 200 of them get their own photo. It was a chance to showcase many recipes that were so new they weren’t in books yet with time-honored classics. 

A few weeks ago I talked about what it was like to write New York Cocktails under enormous time pressure and stress. After that experience, I was convinced I was the cocktail queen of meeting deadlines. I mean, hey, if you can make it there… right? So when Phaidon told me to write 200 essays in a year (actually it was 250, but later whittled down), I didn’t blink. 

Except what I didn’t know is that it would take so long to finalize which drinks to write about that a whole year turned into six months. 200 essays (300 words intro plus recipe) in six months. Most days that’s two of them. Some days it’s three. Ah, the glamorous life of the published author, am I right? 

In October 2022, I was nearly halfway through it. I’d made it into a game. The book is arranged in chronological order (later I was so impressed at how cleverly Phaidon indexed it four ways: by country, drink name, bar, and ingredients!), but I wrote it non-linearly. 

I divided things up by theme, not time. On the day I wrote about the Bizzy Izzy, created by Tom Bullock at the St. Louis Club in the early 1910s, I wanted to tackle Jack Rose, another shaken creation from the same era. My gametime strategy: I just liked the idea of a Bizzy Rose day. 

The problem with the Jack Rose was that its origin story is a little hazy, though we know it was a downtown New York City daisy-esque drink from 1899-ish that needed some fine tuning before the “perfected” version from Ebberlin’s (it’s one of those drinks people love or hate — I happen to love it) became the default recipe circa 1915.

One of the best online references out there is EUVS Vintage Cocktail, a digital library of original cocktail books that was painstakingly scanned and archived by great friends, Jared Brown and Anistatia Miller, a.k.a. Mixellany, who also consulted on recipe sources for my book (along with Vivian Pei, Robert Simonson, Emma Janzen — read her interview here, and Camper English). 

When I was done (or so I thought) drafting Jack Rose, I felt like I needed to double-check something about Bizzy Izzy, and revisited their 1917 first edition of The Ideal Bartender, Bullock’s book, which has the distinction of being the first one ever published written by a Black bartender. 

There it was. Stuck right on page 2: “Distilled and Bottled by Dutchess County Cider Corp., Pleasant Valley, N.Y.” 

It’s the streamlined recipe for the Jack Rose — ⅔ apple jack, ⅓ lemon juice, dash of grenadine. Shake well with cracked ice and serve in a cocktail glass. 

It never appeared in any official edition of The Ideal Bartender, and you won’t find it in reprints either. Which means one of two things: a former owner of this copy may have slipped it in from some unknown source — tucking it into whatever cocktail book was handy — or the century-old variation could genuinely be Bullock’s own, perhaps from a side hustle for a liquor company. Which would explain how that riff made the rounds and became the go-to. 

Either way, it was a pretty cool find. Jared and Anistatia — who are like walking microfiche and comb though hundreds of archives in a given week — hadn’t remembered seeing it until I showed them.

I think that was recipe 80. Only 120 to go!

At the end of October I was going to give myself a little treat and take two days off after being stuck to my desk like a sticky splash of Manhattan. I decided to fly to Vegas to catch Duran Duran in concert on Halloween. I deserved it, damn it. (The legendary show ended up as the basis for their Danse Macabre album and an annual concert tradition around the world.)

On October 30th, hours before takeoff, I wrote the entry for Her Name Is Rio, created by Abigail Gullo in New Orleans. 

My out of office signature: Some people call in sick. I’m doing something way more fun. I’m calling in Duran Duran. I’ll get back to you on November 1st. Do-do do DO. Do DO do. Do-do Do DO do. 

And about a year later, people could sip along! Cherry ice cream smiles all around.

Thanks to everyone who’s bought the book, shared pics, and written about it! You can find it here and wherever else you buy books. Like your favorite classic cocktail, it’s order-able. 

Cheers! 🍸🍹 --A