The Thinking Drinker’s Guide to Alcohol - Wine & Spirits Magazine

The Thinking Drinker’s Guide to Alcohol


Author: by Ben McFarland and Tom Sandham

Publisher: Sterling Epicure, 2014

Price: $24.95

The Thinking Drinker’s Guide to Alcohol stands out among coffee table books for prose that’s as entertaining as the photographs. By Ben McFarland and Tom Sandham, who perform a live show of the same name throughout the UK, the book provides dinner party sound bites in colorful timelines of history, and pop culture-cum-history essays. During this age of Buzzfeed ascendancy, top ten lists feel overdone, but the lists included here are cheeky and smart, while the silliness of the delivery belies the seriousness of the information included.

Caitlin Griffith knew her future career would entail food and drink when, at the age of six, she munched an anchovy from her father’s Caesar salad thinking it as a small strip of bacon—and was more than pleasantly surprised. While enrolled in New York University’s Food Studies program, she learned the secrets of affinage in the caves of Murray’s Cheese.


This story appears in the print issue of jan 2015.
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