Alex Day

From America's most influential cocktail bar comes two cocktail decks in one for the home mixologist: a deck of fifty-two classic cocktail recipes and another deck of fifty-two cards to help you come up with brand-new concoctions. This double deck is a comprehensive primer on the art of handcrafted drinks. The first set of cards, the Classics Deck, features Death & Co's take on fifty-two classic and modern classic recipes, each labeled with categories that reflects its cocktail personality ("Fresh & Lively," "Elegant & Timeless," "Rich & Comforting"). The other deck, called the Roots Deck, is a choose-your-own-cocktail-adventure based on Death & Co's fan favorite book Cocktail Codex. You pull a root cocktail card--Martini, Old Fashioned, Daiquiri, Sidecar, Highball, or Flip--which will prompt you to pull additional cards to continue the assembly of components (specific spirits, citrus, sweeteners, and more) of your drink, leading you to the creation of a brand-new cocktail for your repertoire. The decks can also be used in unison; start with a recipe from The Classics Deck and use the ingredients from the Roots Deck to help you swap ingredients and made new discoveries. With a booklet that includes instructions for using the decks together or separately and information on the most basic kit for the home bar, Death & Co Bartender's Choice is an essential tool for drink-makers.

From the authors of the best-selling 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. In Cocktail 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 encompass all cocktails: 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.