Review: Raising the Bar Brings the Cocktail Revolution Home

Jacob Grier and Brett Adams help aspiring home bartenders build a bar via a carefully sequenced collection of about two dozen bottles.

Raising the Bar: A Bottle-by-Bottle Guide to Mixing Masterful Cocktails at Home, Jacob Grier and Brett Adams help aspiring home bartenders build a bar, or at least a collection of booze, via a carefully sequenced collection of about two dozen bottles. Each recommended new bottle expands the cocktail repertoire a home barkeep can make by supplementing what he or she already has on hand. It's a clever and well-executed concept for what amounts to a boozy cookbook, with more than 200 great cocktail recipes.

This book and its concept is a product of what has been called the cocktail revolution—the reclaiming and rediscovery of pre-Prohibition-style recipes, knowledge, and theory via a distributed network of bartenders, booze makers, and online enthusiasts. It's an acknowledgment, after COVID-era bar closures, that this revolution has come home. Consider the bar raised.