I was sipping a cocktail at my buddy David Alan's peachpollozza party when he told me he had finished his book. I got to flip through a pre-release copy, and it looks fantastic!
Who is David Alan? He is the Tipsy Texan. He is one part cocktail artist, one part beverage historian, one part mentor, and one part curator of an amazing private mixology museum. Forgive me if I have the ratios wrong.
David and his partner Joe have a hand, visible or not, in a lot of the best Austin bars. Hopefully you've already discovered Tipsy's online anthology of boozy tales. See you in a few hours.
As I was saying, David wrote a book called Tipsy Texan: Spirits and Cocktails from the Lone Star State. It's one of those hardcover books that has the cover photo actually printed on the cover rather than onto a dust jacket which will look really ratty the third time you pull it off the shelf and douse it in bourbon.
Unlike that cocktail book you got in college, the recipes here aren't transcribed from some liquor conglomorate's press materials. Tipsy won't trick you into balancing out gasoline-flavored rum with generic cola and lime concentrate. I have little doubt that David tweaked and perfected each recipe until the cocktail started pouring from his ears. Judging from the index, his ingredients are some of the finest craft liquors flowing from Texas distilleries.
In addition to lovely prose and recipies, the book has been lovingly filled with photos by Aimee Wenske and Michael Thad Carter. If you love looking at fun photos of food and drink like I do, you'll appreciate the visuals inside. David personally crafted and styled each cocktail for the photos. They look delicious, and with the writing tell a great story about what we like to drink in Texas. You'll find plenty of material to build your own sunny Austin cocktail scene right at home.
The publisher was kind enough to provide me with all of these high-resolution photos from the book. If you like what you see, consider pre-ordering a copy. It'd be amazing to get enough pre-orders to spike a local author onto a best-seller lists. I've already pre-ordered my own copy on Amazon*.
*Moving Average Inc. is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. Buying items through this link is much appreciated!