Amann Kirsten - Drinking Like Ladies: 75 Modern Cocktails from the Worlds Leading Female Bartenders ; Includes Toasts to Extraordinary Women in History

B ack in 2007, before fresh juice programs were de rigueur and even the local pub had a classic cocktail on the drink menu, Misty happened upon the website for an intriguing womens club based in Pittsburgh. It was called LUPEC, Ladies United for the Preservation of Endangered Cocktails. The classic cocktail revival was just taking root in our hometown of Boston, and it wasnt a challenge to identify fellow boozy broads who were intrigued by the LUPEC goal: dismantling the patriarchy, one drink at a time. We gathered for drinks at Mistys place, and before long we had formed the citys first and only female-oriented cocktail society.

At first, we met once a month in members homes, where we experimented with recipes culled from the pages of vintage cocktail books, and we raised a glass to unsung women in history as we sipped. We started a blog, began writing a cocktail column in the local alt-weekly, and schemed up larger-scale events to raise money for local womens charities. Our first incorporated a month-long signature cocktail program at local bars and a 100-person Jazz Agethemed cocktail party on a riverboat in Boston Harbor. We raised $15,000, which we proudly donated to Jane Doe, Inc., the Massachusetts Coalition Against Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence.

We also started this book back then, believing cocktails and womens history to be a natural fit. Back in 2007 (and 2012 and 2015), we were very wrong; time marched on, many of the male colleagues we came up with published books, and despite the rejections, our hopes burned eternally for this project.

Three months after the 2016 election, we were quite surprised to receive an email through an old email address from our publisher: timing is everything. As many of the progressive policies we take for granted are rescinded and social norms turn retrograde, the time has never felt better to roll up our sleeves and get focused on our mission: dismantling the patriarchy, one drink at a time.

In an effort to expand our membership and evolve beyond the charter of the original LUPEC, we became the Toast Club in 2017. We take our name from a womens networking society founded in Boston, circa 1895, that the Los Angeles Times described as a strong body of those women who can achieve anything when once braced by a handsome luncheon. We know little about these forebroads, beyond that they convened regularly to fortify with green swizzles and practice public speaking on relevant issues of the day, such as The New Woman and The Future of the Husband.

Today the Toast Club continues the tradition. We preserve our own personal joie de vivre by guaranteeing members and guests good parties with green swizzles while striving to enhance and improve the lives of Boston-area women through fundraising events for womens charities. We partner with bars and liquor purveyors to offer coed classic cocktail parties and special events dedicated to drinking for a cause. We preserve drinks from a bygone era as we educate ourselves about the important, nearly forgotten forebroads who sipped them. We invite you to join usin fact, by cracking open a copy of this book, youve already joined the party!

Girly Drink. Whats the first thing that comes to mind when you hear that term? Something pink, like a cosmopolitan? Something tempered with flavoring, like honey whiskey? Something sweet and dessert-y like a chocolate martini? Or perhaps simply a drink with a name so absurd, no mans man would feel comfortable ordering it at the bar: Raspberry Flirtini, anyone? For whatever reason, our culture has come to equate sticky-sweet, silly-named Technicolor concoctions with female imbibing. You know, Girly Drinks.

D o you ever wonder what makes these drinks right for women? A trip to your local liquor store reveals what liquor marketers think you should drink: whiskey that tastes like cinnamon or some skinny-ized variation of an otherwise classic drink. But is that really what you want?

You scour the farmers market for the most perfectly ripe heirloom tomatoes. Youre not afraid to try a chefs specialties, even when its weird stuff like trotters or head cheese. You choose fresh-from-the-farm foods over processed products. So why on earth would you demand anything less from your cocktails?

Cocktails havent always looked and tasted like processed confections. Pre-Prohibition, a time considered the Golden Age of cocktails, bartenders used fresh juices, syrups, and liqueurs to both soften and enhance the natural flavors of a base spirit to develop delightful drinks. As time marched on, the practice was squelched by some key historical events: Prohibition, two World Wars, the industrialization of our food systems, the rise of preservative-rich substitutes in lieu of fresh ingredients, and the trend toward drier drinks that followed. Flavorful spirits such as whiskey and gin gave way to neutral ones such as vodka, and for decades it seemed these good old pre-Prohibition classics didnt stand a chance.

Fortunately for modern drinkers, a generation of mixologists dusted off those nearly forgotten recipes, brushed up on the old techniques, and developed new recipes using antique templates. Renewed interest in the classics resurrected long-forgotten cordials and entire spirit categories. Fresh juice behind the bar has moved from niche specialty to de rigueur.

So, what does it mean to drink like a lady? To us, its enjoying a well-balanced cocktail, passing on drinks that cover up the flavors of alcohol, learning about strong cocktails from strong-minded women, and never being pigeonholed into a skinny girl cocktail. Drinking Like Ladies provides a collection of delicious recipes for every occasionand more on some cool women who came before us to toast.

There is no shortage of unsung women to raise a glass to, and one of our biggest challenges has been narrowing our selection to just seventy-five remarkable women from history and today who inspire us. In these pages, youll find seventy-five bespoke cocktails created by modern female bartenders. These are original drinks that toast the inspirational woman with whom they are paired. We put out the call for strong women to contribute, and we were overwhelmed by the responses, with friends and strangers connecting us to working bartenders all over the world, many of them up-and-coming. The cocktails they developed are creative, thoughtful, and inspiring. This book is not just a nod to women of the past, but a snapshot of the present and a glance toward mixology future: a cocktail time capsule.

We designed this book to help you rethink your drinks, and to shed some light on what we think drinking like a lady is all about. Our goal is to inspire a new generation of drinkers to put down that chocolate martini and pick up a pink ladyand help us give new meaning to the term girly drink.