The Best Cocktail Books, According to Our Editors (2025)

The difference between a good cocktail and a bad cocktail can often come down to ratios. Balancing different spirits, syrups, and mixers is what will distinguish a superb drink with nuanced flavors and aromas from a concoction that tastes like something banned by the Geneva Convention. As staff writer Sam Stone, who has been covering all the drinks, alcoholic and not, for BA since 2022, puts it, “a good cocktail should come together to be something more than the sum of its parts.” When done right, familiar elements can be combined into something truly alchemical, new, and exciting.

As fun as it is to play amateur bartender with one’s own stash of bottles by mixing and matching drink components to varied success, it’s worth having a good cocktail book on hand to help you buff and refine your skills. There are many great cocktail books out there, penned by incredibly talented bartenders who are more than willing to share their wisdom. We’ve selected some of the best cocktail books that we think are essential for any person looking to learn more about the art of making a good cocktail.

The Bartender’s Pantry: A Beverage Handbook for the Universal Bar by Jim Meehan, Bart Sasso, and Emma Janzen

It’s become somewhat glib to say this, but trace the work of the world’s best bars and you’ll find that they are run more like kitchens. Enter Bartender’s Pantry, from a multi-award-winning crew of hospitality pros and writers. The book posits that the best bar is one that embraces one’s pantry and prep time to the fullest. This book helps you deploy fresh ingredients like real lemons and limes like the pros—as opposed to that li’l plastic grenade of juice lapsing in your grocery store produce aisle— and creating clever multi-functional infusions and syrups for all manner of cocktails, with or sans alcohol.  Meanwhile, it also feels like a community effort, with recipes from bartenders, educators and brand ambassadors who offer their own tried-and-true wisdom from years behind the bar. —Joey Hernandez, associate director, drinks and lifestyle

Liquid Intelligence by Dave Arnold

I direct two kinds of people toward Dave Arnold’s James Beard Award–winning Liquid Intelligence: those obsessed with fine-tuning the minutiae of every drink they sip, stir, or shake and those who want to benefit from that level of obsession in someone else. Arnold’s book, filled with 120 recipes and almost 450 photographs, is the result of years of experimentation both behind the bar and in the science lab, and it shows. There are more than 20 pages on ice alone! I personally believe cocktail-making is as much an art as it is a science. Given his professional lean toward engineering and chemistry, Arnold may or may not agree. But the profound level of data, insight, and thought he poured into this book will serve anyone making a drink, whether they deeply care about the molecular structure of an ice cube, or simply remember to slap mint instead of tear it because of his work. —Kelsey Jane Youngman, senior service editor

Liquid Intelligence: The Art and Science of the Perfect Cocktail

Imbibe! by David Wondrich

When I was a newbie bartender in a small wine bar, I spent a lot of time looking at recipes on my phone whenever someone ordered a proper cocktail. Embarrassingly, I lacked foundational knowledge; David Wondrich became my first cocktail teacher, and I still recommend his work to this day. First published in 2007 during the millennial cocktail renaissance, Imbibe! is canon at this point, an engaging historical romp that provides context and practical know-how to hundreds of punches, sours, and slings. The essential ingredient to cocktail geekery is learning the base ratios and formulas that define a drink, and Wondrich balances the pragmatic with colorful storytelling that keeps things from getting too sleepy. —J.H.

Tiki: Modern Tropical Cocktails by Shannon Mustipher

An educator, beverage director, and author, Shannon Mustipher is best known for her deep knowledge of rum, a spirits category that hasn’t always been top of mind in non-tropical contexts. In her book, Tiki: Modern Tropical Cocktails, Mustipher shakes up the thinking around tiki drinks, from sweet and campy to sophisticated and nuanced. Through her work in the book and out in the drink-making world, she rethinks midcentury tiki culture as we know it–which hasn’t really been revived since the recipes were first created in the ’60s, and was famously appropriative of Asian and Pacific Island motifs, not often with respect–and places in it a modern, progressive point of view, focused on ingredients and balanced flavors. —J.H.

Tiki: Modern Tropical Cocktails

Meehan’s Bartenders Manual by Jim Meehan

If you have a vested professional interest in cocktails and mixology, or have serious fantasies about opening up your own joint, Jim Meehan’s James Beard Award–winning manual on bartending provides 400+ pages on pretty much everything you need to know about the ins and outs of tending bar. He covers the history of bartending, how to lay out and design a bar space, creating a cocktail menu, and the business of hospitality. Even if bartending isn’t something you’re looking to pursue as a profession, this book serves as a fascinating record of all the thought that goes into creating the best bars in the world, and will perhaps impart upon you a greater appreciation the next time you step into the best new bar in town. —Wilder Davies, commerce writer

Meehan’s Bartender Manual

The Cocktail Cabinet by Kara Newman

At the end of a long day, I love two things: a refreshing cocktail (gin preferred) and not making decisions. Selecting one recipe from a dense cocktail book is so overwhelming I often skip the whole thing and resign myself to going to bed without a night cap. The Cocktail Cabinet by Kara Newman has helped me avoid this tragedy by adapting the book format to the beautifully illustrated cards that are reminiscent of my many tarot decks (the other way I make many of my decisions). My box, the gin version, looks cute on my bar counter, but also comes in different spirits like vodka or whiskey if gin isn’t your thing. The 50-card deck is beautifully illustrated and offers a good balance of classic recipes and less familiar cocktails, all built with approachable and easily sourced ingredients. I shuffle the deck face down and imagine myself 10 minutes in the future, with a chilled drink in a dainty glass before pulling a card at random and placing it on top of my bar cabinet. Will it be a pink lady or a classic martini? It is comforting to leave the final call to fate—the cards know best. —Megan Paetzhold, senior visuals editor

The Cocktail Cabinet: Gin

Drinking French by David Lebovitz

Drinking French is really a cocktail hour book, but I think that makes it all the more fun to read and cook from. Cookbook author, memoirist, and blogger David Lebovitz invites us into a very French way of gathering and entertaining with recipes for café drinks (coffees, teas, hot cocoas, etc.), DIY infusions, cocktails, of course, and the ever-important snacks to go along with it all. He folds in helpful primers on French aperitifs, demystifying the long list of bottles on many a bar menu I’ve bluffed my way through ordering from, and shares his favorite bars in Paris too. My copy lives on my bar cart, and I turn to it almost every time I entertain, whether for Lebovitz’s impeccable gougères or the elderflower cordial I spike lemonades and iced teas with all summer long. —K.J.Y.

Drinking French: The Iconic Cocktails, Apéritifs, and Café Traditions of France

Smuggler’s Cove by Martin Cate and Rebecca Cate

Everyone loves a good tiki drink: ornate, colorful, and instantly relaxing. Yet it can also be a little intimidating to make at home. Smuggler’s Cove is an insightful guide into not only understanding how to make a perfect drink (the differences between types of rum, how to make homemade infused syrups, proper techniques in building and layering) but also the history of this cocktail culture, where it came from and how to think about it going forward. And like any good tiki drink itself, half the pleasure of this book is the stunning visuals that encourage a little playful escapism. —Ryan Harrington, research director

Smuggler’s Cove: Exotic Cocktails, Rum, and the Cult of Tiki

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