A Conversation with Amy Stewart

Plus, the Chance to Win a Copy of Stewart's Classic Cocktail Book "The Drunken Botanist," Which Is 10 Years Old This Year, With a New Edition.

Amy Stewart (l.) and yours truly in our natural habitats.

The Mix has a special guest this week: Amy Stewart, the noted author of popular botany books, as well as one particularly significant cocktail book. That volume is The Drunken Botanist, which was published in 2013 and is now available in a new, 10th-anniversary edition.

The cocktail book world has become a very crowded field in recent years. It is increasingly difficult for a new book to stand out, and even harder for an older book to show staying power. But Stewart’s single foray into mixology is just such a volume. When it hit the shelves a decade ago, nobody in the bar world knew of Stewart. But they soon learned that she had something essential to teach them about the world of spirits and cocktails.

The simple, but brilliant premise of The Drunken Botanist is that every liquid and garnish in our treasured mixed drinks comes from a plant. In many cases—gin, amari, vermouth, Chartreuse, etc—they are derived from myriad plants. Stewart proved that it behooved bartenders and cocktail writers to know their flora.

Amy and I are celebrating the 10th anniversary of her book by giving away copies of both it and my latest book, The Encyclopedia of Cocktails. We’re going to give away a copy of each on both our Substacks. You win by leaving a comment, any sort of comment you like; but the more thoughtful and interesting, the better. Please leave a comment of any kind right here, and we will choose the winning comment from those submissions.

While you cook up your potentially winning comment, please enjoy the conversation between Amy and I below.

AMY STEWART: You started writing about cocktails for the New York Times right about the time I started researching The Drunken Botanist. At the time I remember thinking that you had the coolest gig in the world. Am I right that you were a theater critic before that? How did the cocktail writing gig come about?

ROBERT SIMONSON: I started writing about cocktails for the Times in 2009. Prior to that, I had written about theater for the Times since 2000. I made the switch in beats after being invited by mistake to the Tales of the Cocktail convention in New Orleans. This was in 2006. As you might imagine, a bunch of excitable young mixologists set against a surreal pleasure landscape like New Orleans seemed like pretty good copy to a journalist who had dwelled within the very small circle of the New York theater business for twenty years. I needed a change, and this was just the ticket. The modern cocktail movement was just getting underway and I was lucky enough to get in on the ground floor as a reporter.

I remember your book The Drunken Botanist came as a complete surprise when it was published in 2013. There was nothing else like it. How did you, a chronicler of botany, nature and gardening, come to write a booze book?

The Drunken Botanist’s 10th anniversary edition and The Encyclopedia of Cocktails’ first edition.

AMY:  Oh, that's interesting, because my story is connected to Tales of the Cocktail, too. (This is a cocktail conference that happens in New Orleans every July). I had been at a conference of horticulture writers, and I was illicitly mixing drinks at the trade show. After a couple drinks, I got to talking about all the plants that made up the G&T in my hand, and at some point I said, "Somebody ought to write a book about that!" 

Tales was a few months later, so I booked myself a ticket and flew to New Orleans. This was probably 2010 or so. I met a lot of bartenders and distillers who were extremely interested in every detail about every ingredient in every bottle—but they knew nothing about botany. I sat in presentations where botanical Latin was butchered and all kinds of horticultural misinformation was tossed around. I thought, "I know how to talk to botanists. I can sort this out in no time."

So that was the idea I had—to bridge the gap between the mixology world and the botanical world. My publishers thought of this as a gardening book, but I knew it was a book for cocktail nerds.

One thing I realized as I was working on this book: I always thought the plant world was full of nonsense, myths, and misinformation. Then I met the cocktail world. So many lies! Exaggerations! Tall tales!

So for you, as a writer for our Paper of Record, where fact-checking actually means something—what's it been like to report on a subject that is rife with hogwash and balderdash?  (Pretty sure those are cocktail names, by the way)

ROBERT: That's fascinating. I guess Tales of the Cocktail was the wellspring of so many ideas and movements. It was one of the reasons the cocktail revival sped along so quickly. The bartenders all finally had a place to gather together and share ideas.

You're right that the cocktail world is rife with myths, tall tales, outright lies and baseless conjecture. It's been the bane of my existence as a journalist. You try and try to get the story behind a cocktail right, or disprove a prevailing origin myth and, in the end, it doesn't really amount to a hill of beans. Because nobody cares. Or, just a few people care. A popular saying among bartenders is "Don't let the truth get in the way of a good story." What are you going to do when you're fighting that? I do my best to continue to print the truth in my books, hoping it might stick somewhere down the line. But it's not just the bartender. The younger generation does not seem to be doing their research and have fallen back on repeating the old debunked myths. That's partly why I have come to focus on the modern cocktail revival of the past 25 years, because it's all fresh history, with almost all of the players involved living, and thus fairly easily verifiable. 

Once your book was published and you started circulating in the cocktail world, giving talks and doing seminars, what did you think of it? Did you see some similarities to the botany world, or was it a completely different universe? I came from the theater world and, after a while, I realized the bar world wasn't that different from my old beat. But it took a while for me to realize that.

AMY: It was a very different universe! The plant world is made up of people who are friendly and down-to-earth, fun but in an outdoorsy, geeky plant way, and more likely to be early risers than late-night partiers. They're not terribly hung up on appearances or being cool or chasing trends, unless you call a new petunia variety a trend.

The cocktail world, on the other hand, had much more of a late-night party vibe. It was weird for me to see that this was an industry where women were still expected to bring the glam and sex appeal. High heels, fishnet stockings, leather bustiers—I honestly didn't know that world still existed, outside of Las Vegas nightclubs. I never did feel like I fit in.

So I didn't give talks and seminars in the cocktail world—I did that in the gardening world. Audiences at garden clubs and botanical gardens love to hear about The Drunken Botanist. Those are my people, really, so I stayed there. The book does a better job of straddling those two worlds than I have managed to do.

Let's tell people about these books we're giving them!   I'll go first. The Drunken Botanist is celebrating its tenth anniversary, and my publisher has released a new edition, with a jazzed-up cover and a bit of bonus material from me about planting a cocktail garden. I wrote this book because I realized that almost every single ingredient in every single bottle of booze comes from a plant. So it includes everything from agave to barley to the mint in your mojito. I get into the botany, the history, and the horticulture behind each of those plants--and I try to span the globe, and show what people are drinking in Africa and India and China and other places we might not think about when we think of drinking culture. It's a good gift book for drinkers and gardeners.

Your new Encyclopedia of Cocktails is gorgeous and very gifty. Tell us about it! 

ROBERT:  I'm very jealous of you getting a 10th anniversary edition. I've tried to convince my publisher, Ten Speed Press, to do a new addition of some of my books, particularly A Proper Drink, my history of the cocktail revival. It came out in 2016 and a lot has happened since then. A Proper Drink will have its ten-year anniversary in 2016. Maybe I can persuade them. (Hint, hint, in case anyone from Ten Speed is reading this.) 

With The Encyclopedia of Cocktails, I wanted to create a popular guide to cocktail history, a kind of "People's Encyclopedia," something accessible that could be useful to both bar professionals and cocktail enthusiasts. I also wanted it to make for enjoyable reading and have a singular voice throughout. That's why I insisted on writing every one of the 300-plus entries myself. Moreover, I want a compendium that tells the whole cocktail story from the origins of the drink to the present day. So you get Jerry Thomas and the Sherry Cobbler, but also Audrey Saunders and the Espresso Martini. 

I have one more question for you. After The Drunken Botanist came out, I started following you on Instagram. But I didn't find pictures of plants or cocktails. I just found artwork. Image after image. Beautiful paintings, too. Have you always been an artist, or did you take that up in recent years? And do you consider yourself an artist more than a writer?

One of Stewart’s paintings.

AMY: Thanks! Art was always a hobby for me—I started when I was about thirty—but now I'm illustrating my own book and teaching art classes and other things that make it a bit more of a profession, although I still try to stay focused on having fun and not turning it into an obligation. I started as an oil painter, and now I also draw and do watercolor, gouache, ink, and basically anything that can happen in a sketchbook. I'm illustrating my Substack and giving little art lessons to paid subscribers, so we have our own little sketchbook club going. I love it for the camaraderie and spirit of adventure. It's great to travel with a sketchbook, because you always have something to do, and a reason to just sit and soak up a place.

As far as Instagram goes, I started out doing all the usual social media things an author might do online, but it just wasn't fun. So then I decided that I would pretend that Instagram is an art app. I only follow artists, and I only post art. So when you open my Instagram, you just see paintings. I forget that people do other things with it!

Another Stewart Painting.

I think we should finish with a couple recipes. I do have a website, drunkenbotanist.com, where I posted a lot of recipes and cocktail gardening advice that didn't fit in the book. I want to recommend a drink from that site that I called My Tequila Valentine, because it's red and I made it one year at Valentine's Day. I'm suggesting it now because blood oranges are coming into season, and they're amazing. It's very easy:

My Tequila Valentine

• 1 1/2 ounces Tequila or mezcal

• 1/4 ounce Campari

• 1/4 ounce sweet vermouth

• 1/4 ounce dry vermouth

• Fresh juice of one blood orange, about 2 ounces

Stir over ice and pour into a glass filled with crushed ice or ice cubes. Garnish with citrus slice or peel.

ROBERT:  During the book tour, I've been spreading the word of the Boothby, a San Francisco cocktail by Bill Boothby from around the turn of the 20th century, when he bartended at the Palace Hotel. It's basically a Manhattan topped with Champagne. A Manhattan Royale, if you will. I've turn many people onto it during the last three months. I've been surprised how many people—including bartenders!—were not aware of it. I’ve already posted a recipe for a Boothby cocktail on The Mix this year. So here’s another variation which works as well, a Red Hook topped with Champagne, based on Vincenzo Enrico’s modern classic.

Red Hook Royale

• 2 ounces rye, preferably Rittenhouse Rye

• 1/2 ounce maraschino liqueur

• 1/2 ounce Punt e Mes

• 1 ounce Champagne

Combine first three ingredients in a mixing glass half filled with ice. Stir until chilled, about 15 seconds. Strain into a chilled coupe. Top with Champagne. Garnish with a cherry. 

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Giveaway! To win a copy of both Amy’s book The Drunken Botanist and Robert’s book The Encyclopedia of Cocktails, post any kind of comment below. I’ll pick a winning comment and send that person an email. You can also visit Amy’s substack for another chance to win.

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Odds and Ends…

I will be in conversation with spirits writer Clay Risen at Sunken Harbor Club on Sunday, Jan. 28. The event, part of the Sunken Sundays literary series, is sold out. But there is a waitlist, and you never know!… I spoke with Paul Clarke on the Radio Imbibe podcast about the cocktail revival, The Encyclopedia of Cocktails and The Mix. Have a listen!.. Lucy’s, a beloved dive in the East Village single-handedly run by Ludwika "Lucy" Mickevicius, may be on its way out, reports the blog EV Grieve. The two buildings at 135-137 Avenue A were recently sold for $19.1 million. The new owner—an LLC with a Brooklyn address—now wants $25,000 a month in rent… Henry LaFargue, one of the five founders of the Manhattan cocktail bar Employees Only, and a lifetime bartender and hospitality worker, passed away on Jan. 9… New Riff Distilling announced head distiller Brian Sprance has been named master distiller, the first designation in the distillery’s history. Sprance has been with the company since its inception in 2014… Sip & Guzzle, the new dual-concept bar from Shingo Gokan and Steve Schneider, opened its doors on Cornelia Street in the West Village on Friday, Jan. 19… New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy on Jan. 16 signed a bill easing some restrictions on their businesses. The liquor license reform bill “allows license holders for New Jersey breweries, cideries, meaderies and craft distilleries to hold 25 off-premises special events and an unlimited number of special events and private parties onsite. It will also allow the hiring of servers and wait staff and the sale of some food items, like chips and packaged snacks, and non-alcoholic beverages. The new law will increase the number of barrels a brewery can manufacture from 10,000 to 300,000 per year and gets rid of a tour requirement before a customer can try a beverage.”… Chicago Magazine released its list of what it considers to be the 20 best cocktails in Chicago. Included are drinks from Scofflaw, Three Dots and a Dash, The Violet Hour, Estereo and Billy Sunday… New York Times writer Dan Saltzstein will make an appearance on March 12 at 8 pm at Book Club Bar in connection with his forthcoming book That’s So New York… The classic Skylark bar in Chicago has been bought by six of its employees. They bought it from the original owners, who are retiring. The new owners plan to keep the classic saloon just the way it is.