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A lot of cocktail books are published every year, some of them containing thousands of recipes, some of them focusing on only a few dozen. Many of these books aren't especially useful, presenting recipes chosen with little care or attention to detail. With books like that, it's caveat emptor and bibitor.

Not so with Jim Meehan's PDT Cocktail Book, an essential volume from one of the cocktail world's brightest stars. Meehan is the manager of PDT, one of New York's most celebrated cocktail bars. Prior to that he worked under Audrey Sanders at Pegu Club. His credentials are impeccable.

As soon as you pick it up, you know this is a quality book; substantial and well bound, with thick glossy paper. The illustrations (by Chris Gall) are bright, colorful, whimsical and eye-catching.

The PDT Cocktail Book shares Meehan's advice on designing a bar, stocking spirits and choosing the right ingredients and glassware, along with his tips and techniques for properly mixing drinks. A novice mixologist can pick up this book and gain a solid introduction to the subject, even if they have little or no knowledge to begin with. But the experienced bartender will also find much to learn from here.

The heart of The PDT Cocktail Book is, of course, the drinks. It contains over 300 recipes: about half of them original drinks served at PDT, along with many classic cocktails, plus some new suggestions from friends and colleagues. This isn't a hodgepodge of random recipes either. These are hand-picked and tested; the real drinks as served in a world-class bar.

The ingredients and instructions for each drink are clearly spelled out. But Meehan goes one step further, including (where possible) the provenance of the drink, giving credit to the person who invented it. As such, The PDT Cocktail Book represents a valuable volume of cocktail history, helping those who are interested to trace the origins of various cocktails. (Along those lines, it also contains an excellent bibliography.)

Another interesting thing Meehan does is recommend specific brands of spirits for all the recipes. Thus we see that he makes his gin and tonics with Tanqueray, his Martinis with Plymouth, and his Aviations with Beefeater. These aren't hard and fast rules; they're simply guidelines, telling us how they make the drinks at PDT. They represent a starting point for building the flavor profile of the drink. You can (and should) try combinations of your own.

Meehan's book will appeal most to those who already have an interest in and facility with mixology. Any bartender would be strongly urged to buy this right away. But even the amateur will enjoy this beautiful book.

If you have any interest in drinking well, you will appreciate thumbing through it. There are so many interesting ideas for ways of combining flavors here. It also teaches a lot about spirits and how to use them. If you don't have the ingredients to make the drinks at home, copy the recipes down and take them to your favorite bartender and let him/her mix them for you.

The PDT Cocktail Book joins Gary Regan's The Joy of Mixology and Dale Degroff's The Craft of the Cocktail as the indispensable monographs on modern cocktails and spirits. It belongs on every cocktail lover's shelf.

For more reviews like this one, please visit ProfessorCocktail.com.

After reading the review "Good, but not great, cocktail book" by Jude I decided to write my own review of this book to set things right. As stated in the foreword that David Wondrich penned, this is the book that others wish they had written. No level of detail is spared; no secrets held back from this celebrated cocktail haunt. The content, format and illustrations are transcendent. To give it 3 stars because it lacks pictures of cocktails or descriptions of how a cocktail tastes, is like saying Shakespeare should have included cliff's notes, illustrated each scene and made a note about how the audience should feel. If the world came to and unfortunate end and cocktails revered to vodka martinis, a millenia later this book would be the Rosetta Stone that would bring back a cocktail renaissance.

Dave Catania

I bought this book as a birthday present for my guy, and he absolutely loves it. I don't know much about cocktails, but I do know that this book is one of the most gorgeous volumes I've seen on any subject! I think the reviewer who criticized the lack of pictures of finished drinks missed the point- photographs of drinks would not fit into the overall artistic feel of this book. (And if you so desperately want to confirm that you made the drink correctly, go to PDT and order it!)

The images in the book are beautiful enough to frame.

The PDT Cocktail Book could be well be the new Savoy cocktail book. There is something for everyone from home mixologists just finding there love for cocktails, right thought to people trying to open a bar. The recipes, layout and artwork make this one of the most readable cocktail books I own, it has everything to be a classic.
The criticism that I can see being levied at it is the inclusions of brand names which many see as advertising, however as a professional mixologist I can assure you this is a very useful inclusion, it helps you gain an understanding the balance and delicate flavors of a drink, which becomes especially important when making substitutions.
This book has become my go to book when looking to make a new cocktail. Simply - a must have!

This book was a gift for my sister-in-law who is a bartender in a 4 star resort in LA. She went nuts over this book and I will ask her to write a detailed review. I had read reviews of the book in food magazines and knew she had to have it. It was on back order for a long time through Amazon, which shows how popular it is. She did say in an email to me about the book "I love the history, the stories, the philosophy behind the drinks and styles...". The writer of the book has a "speakeasy" in NYC and the entrance is through a telephone booth, so that shows the whimsy of the place and this seems to have carried over into the book.

Great quality pages. Really neat book, full of lots of information. I've been loving this book so far and have tried a couple recipes

Let's get the obvious out of the way: this book is beautiful, with an extensive list of drinks and an enviable pedigree. Regardless of anything else I write in this review, this is a lovely gift for anyone even vaguely interested in the cocktail arts.

But I must admit that my initial reaction was a sigh. I received the book as a gift and immediately started flipping through to see the recipes, only to find a plethora of prescribed brands and obscure ingredients. It was disheartening.

At first. What I realized later was that I'd been hoping for a true beginner's cocktail book, something of a primer with flexibility in ingredient choice. And for that purpose, I can't really recommend the PDT book. It's advanced - delightfully so - but it will be overwhelming to someone who doesn't already know their way around the classics (and some popular moderns, too).

However, as an intermediate or advanced cocktail book, the PDT book is wonderful. It really introduces you to a new suite of ingredients and the brand specifics do act as a nice starting point for the recipes. I think substitutions and suggestions would have been nice or, at the very least, some reasons for why the specific brands were picked, but that's excusable due to inventiveness of the recipes.

TL;DR - This is a great book, but it's not an appropriate first for an aspiring cocktailian to build their basic repertoire. For that, go check out The Joy of Mixology instead. Nevertheless, the PDT book DOES have a place on every bartender's bookshelf for when the basics just don't cut it anymore.

This is a great book, but it's not as good as Speakeasy or Mix Shake Stir (in my opinion). Those are my go-to cocktail books at the moment. This, however, is a good cocktail bible - it contains all the standards plus some special cocktails created just for/by PDT in NY. All of the books I mentioned have great recipes that require some sideline recipes to be completed in order to make many of the cocktails (special simple syrups and other concoctions). The end results are good though. As a person that has a collection of cocktail books, this is a good one in my central cooking/cocktail library.

Great book, tons of recipes with a little bit of history behind every one. Ive tried to go to this bar with no success is very busy and hard to get a reservation. My only citric is that the recipes are only by alphabetical order. I would've prefer to have a by spirit or ingredient index. Other than that is awesome.