Here are 35 books that Agave Spirits fans have personally recommended if you like
Agave Spirits.
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I have been a journalist for over a decade, most frequently writing on the subjects of spirits, cocktails, and drinking culture for such publications as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Esquire, Playboy, and VinePair. I have written 12 books—6 of them on booze—my latest of which is Dusty Booze: In Search of Vintage Spirits.
Booze books can too often be overly positive, cheerleading for the industry at large; it’s rare you see one so incisive and damning.
Once nothing more than a headache-inducing frat house shooter, today tequila (and mezcal) has become the trendy spirit of those in the know…or those who want to seem like they are. But as Martineau details, the rapid expansion of this agricultural spirit into all bars, retailers, and marketplaces—much of it driven by, yes, gringos, some of them bold-faced names—has inherently ruined this beautiful spirit in many ways that may never be recovered.
Once little more than party fuel, tequila has graduated to the status of fine sipping spirit. How the Gringos Stole Tequila traces the spirit's evolution in America from frat-house firewater to luxury good. But there's more to the story than tequila as upmarket drinking trend. Chantal Martineau spent several years immersing herself in the world of tequila--traveling to visit distillers and agave farmers in Mexico, meeting and tasting with leading experts and mixologists around the United States, and interviewing academics on either side of the border who have studied the spirit.
I'm an award-winning travel and drinks writer and have worked for National Geographic, The Times, BBC Travel, American Express, AAA, Waitrose Drinks, and many more. My love of spirits and travel led to me starting the Travel Distilled website and I'm the author of Cask Strength, which tells the story of the barrel, and of the travel guides Islay Distilled and Cognac Distilled. I've visited numerous distilleries in the UK, Ireland, USA, France, Greece, Iceland, Sweden, Mexico, and elsewhere. I was persuaded to try drinking vodka for breakfast while touring Siberia. It seemed a good idea at the time but it's not a habit I've kept up.
Mezcal is one of the fastest-growing spirits categories, and I love this smoky-tasting drink that's mostly made in small batches by one-man (or increasingly one-woman) distilleries around Mexico.
Author Emma Janzen loves it and is curious about it so much that she sets off on a journey around Mexico to meet the makers, and the bartenders who are turning mezcal into cocktails. I'm not jealous of her journey at all! The journey produced a handsome book with wonderful photos, and it's a book that has both style and substance.
What I like about it is that she gets out and meets people, and introduces the reader to their lives, whether it be cool mixologists in Oaxaca City or mezcal makers in the middle of nowhere. If you like mezcal, it's a must-read.
In Mezcal, two-time James Beard Award–winning author Emma Janzen explores what sets this cousin of tequila apart from the rest of the pack.
*Nominated for the 2018 James Beard Foundation Book Award in the Beverage category*
Produced in Mexico for centuries but little known elsewhere until recent years, mezcal has captured the imagination of spirits enthusiasts with its astonishing complexities. And while big liquor is beginning to jump aboard the bandwagon, most mezcal is still artisanal in nature, produced using small-batch techniques handed down for generations, often with agave plants harvested in the wild.
I have been a journalist for over a decade, most frequently writing on the subjects of spirits, cocktails, and drinking culture for such publications as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Esquire, Playboy, and VinePair. I have written 12 books—6 of them on booze—my latest of which is Dusty Booze: In Search of Vintage Spirits.
I had always believed that a great booze book didn’t need to just be pages of pretty pictures and cocktail recipes—I knew there were booze stories that could make for compelling, novel-like narratives as well. Thad Vogler’s 2017 work was the first to actually prove my theories correct, however.
His journey to both visit the sources—Cuba! Oaxaca! Cognac!—and meet the producers of such vaunted spirits as rum, mezcal, and cognac, all while philosophizing about what artisan spirits production actually means, resonated with me like no other booze before.
Vogler’s humor and bawdy tone also showed me a drinks-related book need not be a dry read—booze is fun, after all!
Spirits expert Thad Vogler, owner of the James Beard Award–winning Bar Agricole, takes readers around the world, celebrating the vivid characters who produce hand-made spirits like rum, scotch, cognac, and mezcal. From the mountains of Mexico and the forbidden distilleries of Havana, to the wilds of Scotland and the pastoral corners of France and beyond, this adventure will change how you think about your drink.
Thad Vogler is one of the most important people in the beverage industry today. He’s a man on a mission to bring “grower spirits”—spirits with provenance, made in the traditional way by individuals rather than…
While the Bay Area’s impact on the way we eat as a country, being at the forefront of the farm-to-table and seasonal produce movement, cocktails are being equal consideration. Why not? Distilled spirits are agricultural products, the same way wine and beer are, and so it reasons that we would worry about how they are made, their history, and the future. Can cocktails be made in a more sustainable way? Can I use beets in my cocktail? Do spirits have a sense of place? And will applying beer to a wound help it heal (note: it won’t)? Here’s a selection of books that explore the past, present, and possible future of how you drink.
In A Good Drink, Farrell explores what it takes to drink sustainable cocktails, from farm to glass.
In Mexico she talks to families growing agave for mezcal and how the process helps regenerate the land and wildlife, while in South Carolina she talks to distillers who are focusing their production on heritage grains. Even bars are trying to reduce their impact, focusing on a London bar that is reducing water use and waste.
Shanna Farrell loves a good drink. As a bartender, she not only poured spirits, but learned their stories-who made them and how. Living in San Francisco, surrounded by farm-to-table restaurants and high-end bars, she wondered why the eco-consciousness devoted to food didn't extend to drinks. The short answer is that we don't think of spirits as food. But whether it's rum, brandy, whiskey, or tequila, drinks are distilled from the same crops that end up on our tables. Most are grown with chemicals that cause pesticide resistance and pollute waterways, and distilling itself requires huge volumes of water. Even bars…
I’ve been writing about cocktails and spirits for over a decade, often in collaboration with my mixologist husband and co-author, John McCarthy. Our mission is to create delicious, practical cocktail recipes for the home bartender. There are a number of cocktail books out there, but they usually fall into two camps. Novelty books, which are often silly and untested. Or books written by professionals, for professionals, impractical if you don’t have a centrifuge, dehydrator, and 300-odd liqueurs in your home bar. What about the vast middle ground–people who love cocktails, want to make them at home, and learn something while they’re sipping? We believe in finding the best books for them.
I love the premise of this book. When someone asks us for a cocktail recipe, 90% of the time–or more–it’s because they’re making it for a party. So, an entire book of cocktails already proportioned for a crowd and tested for success when made in bulk just makes sense.
Quite a number of cocktails are actually a pain to make in advance. This book spares you the nuisance of considering those and gets right to the (sophisticated, beautifully crafted) party drinks.
A hip, accessible guide to batch cocktail-making for entertaining, with 65 recipes that can be made hours—or weeks!—ahead of time so that hosts and hostesses have one less thing to worry about as the doorbell rings.
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR BY BUZZFEED
As anyone who has hosted a dinner party knows, cocktail hour is the most fun part of the evening for guests—but the most stressful for whomever is in charge of keeping the drinks flowing. The solution, though, is simple: batch it! In this fun collection, Maggie Hoffman offers 65 delicious and creative cocktails…
Veronika Sophia Robinson has eaten a plant-based diet for forty-eight years and knows what healthy and delicious vegan and vegetarian food should taste like. She has had extensive experience in cooking for others whether around her kitchen table or in a yurt with no electricity feeding up to fifty families for five days (for many years). The Mystic Cookfire is a tome of over 400 pages. It is an expression of her deep love and respect for food, conscious cookery, and intentional eating. Her second recipe book Love From My Kitchen is a collection of vegan, gluten-free recipes based on the four elements: fire, earth, air, and water. She’s delighted that her granddaughter is a fourth-generation vegetarian.
As a lover of preserving the abundance of produce from my orchard and garden, this book has proved to be just what I was looking for: LESS SUGAR! It is ideally suited to the health conscious preserver who enjoys inventive and interesting recipes. Cleverly organised by sweetener: coconut sugar, maple syrup, honey, dried fruits, juices, agave, it’s a fantastic mix of interesting flavour combinations, manageable batches, and awareness of the seasons.
The Preserves You Love, SWEETER THAN EVER After years of addressing questions reducing sugar, substituting sugar, and leaving it out altogether, accomplished canner and author Marisa McClellan began to rejigger her recipes, helping her home canners enjoy the flavors of the season without the refined sugars. The result is Naturally Sweet Food in Jars , preserving in the tenor of today's health-conscious audience. . The inventive spreads, dips, pickles, and whole fruits in McClellan's third preserving book use only unrefined sweeteners like maple sugar and syrup, coconut sugar, dates, agave, honey, and dried fruits and juices,and less of them. The…
As an own voice author, it is incredibly important for me to write characters that look like me, but it is exceptionally healing to find novels where I feel represented. My inner child yearns for more books that remind me of my adolescent wish to be a main character, to have a fleshed-out story, to be the hero or overpowered creature of the night. Being a main character means being seen and being heard, and I think now is the time to branch into every genre I can to know that any story, no matter how big or small the pages, can be done and can be Black. Happy reading!
Faeblood Unbroken by Alyiah Marie Gonzales is exactly what I needed when I started reading indie novels. In this diverse collision of fae and vampire lore, we follow Elyria through a magnetic, romantic slow burn with Zarina Sinclair, and both women are incredibly tender and fierce through Gonzales’ descriptive writing. The tension in this novel shines through how the women communicate and handle complications, while the lightheartedness in this novel does an excellent job of propelling us through the darkness of their character arcs and introspective decisions. This novel brings the feelings of women to the forefront of its imaginative storytelling, and I look forward to seeing where else the diversity will unfold as the series continues.
And I am aware of none of it, content to bartend at Celestial Nights and spend weekends with my roommate Leafy and cheap bottles of tequila. But, when a woman with golden eyes and an electric touch sparks my world into embers and challenges everything I thought I knew about myself, a forgotten piece of home returns and leaves me at a perilous crossroads.
Zarina Sinclair now holds my heart between stiletto nails, and my own reckless curiosity yearns to see what she’ll do with it. Despite myths…
I have been a voracious zombie fan since George A. Romero changed the nature of zombies with his low-budget breakthrough film, Night of the Living Dead over 40 years ago. Since then, I have watched a ton of zombie movies and shows and read even more zombie books and comics. It was inevitable that they would star in my own books, including my zombie trilogy, The Deadland Saga along with several novellas and short stories.
This is my favorite zombie series of all time. Adair is an incredible writer, and his Slow Burn series gives us plenty of Romero-style zombies that we love, but it also gives us more. In this series, some of the infected don’t turn into regular zombies. Zed is one of these. I don’t want to give any spoilers but trust me on this. If you like a good zombie tale, read Slow Burn, and I guarantee you’ll continue on to book 2 and every other book in this series about zombies with a twist.
A new flu strain has been spreading across Africa, Europe, and Asia. Disturbing news footage is flooding the cable news channels. People are worried. People are frightened. But Zed Zane is oblivious. Zed needs to borrow rent money from his parents. He gets up Sunday morning, drinks enough tequila to stifle his pride and heads to his mom’s house for a lunch of begging, again. But something is wrong. There’s blood in the foyer. His mother’s corpse is on the living room floor. Zed’s stepdad, Dan is wild with crazy-eyed violence and attacks Zed when he comes into the house.…
Raised on happy hours on Cape Cod, MA patios with my Irish-American relatives, I long have been fascinated by how alcohol can bring people together and facilitate bonds that traverse both hardship and joy. During my travels and research in Mexico, Chile, Peru, Guatemala, and Ecuador, I observed how alcohol could both render families asunder and unite communities. As addiction makes clear, alcohol could hold tremendous power over individuals. But it also marked the identities of even the most casual drinkers. Throughout my research on other topics—crime, gender, medicine—alcohol consistently emerges as a crucial avenue of inquiry. The books listed below offer innovative and insightful ways of centering alcohol in scholarly narratives.
With clear and engaging prose, Gaytan reveals the power dynamics that shaped tequila’s trajectory in Mexico and abroad.
She traces tequila’s meteoric rise past other agave-derived drinks like pulque and mezcal. I really appreciate how she approaches her study as a sociologist but does not eschew history in her analysis. Although ancient Mayas were among the first to produce and consume tequila, its association with modernity can be attributed, in part, to modern marketers disassociating tequila from indigenous inebriation.
Even as she firmly grounds tequila in lo Mexicano or being Mexican, Gaytan also explores tequila’s influence and popularity in the United States. Her book reminded me how different my experience of drinking tequila in the United States has been from my enjoyment of tequila in cantinas in Mexico.
Italy has grappa, Russia has vodka, Jamaica has rum. Around the world, certain drinks-especially those of the intoxicating kind-are synonymous with their peoples and cultures. For Mexico, this drink is tequila. For many, tequila can conjure up scenes of body shots on Cancun bars and coolly garnished margaritas on sandy beaches. Its power is equally strong within Mexico, though there the drink is more often sipped rather than shot, enjoyed casually among friends, and used to commemorate occasions from the everyday to the sacred. Despite these competing images, tequila is universally regarded as an enduring symbol of lo mexicano.
As a child, I loved singing and acting and fantasized about what it might be like to be a famous movie star. Though the practical side of my brain led me to become a lawyer instead, my fascination with Hollywood never waned. When I set out to write my first novel, I finally had the opportunity to explore celebrity culture. But I'm just a regular person, living a very normal life. The books I’m recommending lift the curtain on fame and explore the ultimate fantasy: what if a beloved, uber-famous actor or actress actually fell in love with you?
Talk about swoon-worthy: recently divorced regular gal Nora is a Hallmark-style screenwriter until her latest script is tapped for the big screen starring the “sexiest man alive,” Leo.
I was drawn in by the fantasy of crushing on a movie star, but I stayed for the relatability and depth of the main character. This was one I read in about twenty-four hours because I needed to know whether Nora would find her happy ending.
I also appreciated that this book left some things to the imagination. It was heavier on the romance than the sex.
"Readers who loved Emily Henry's Book Lovers are sure to savor Nora Goes Off Script." —Shelf Awareness
Named one of the Best Beach Reads of Summer 2022 by The Washington Post • USA Today • Cosmopolitan • Southern Living • Country Living • Business Insider • Buzzfeed • Book Riot • The Augusta Chronicle
Nora’s life is about to get a rewrite…
Nora Hamilton knows the formula for love better than anyone. As a romance channel screenwriter, it’s her job. But when her too-good-to work husband leaves her and their two kids, Nora turns her…
