The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails

David Wondrich is a James Beard Award winning author, cocktail historian, mixologist, and educator, and one of the pioneers of the current renaissance in the art of mixing drinks. He is an acknowledged authority on spirits and their production, having written extensively on most categories in the market. A former English professor, his long-time interest in the arcana surrounding spirits and cocktails led him to leave academia to become Esquire Magazine's drinks correspondent, and later senior drinks columnist at the Daily Beast. David has written four books on drinks: Esquire Drinks; Killer Cocktails; Imbibe! (the first cocktail book to win a James Beard award); and Punch. Noah Rothbaum is the editor of the Daily Beast's Half Full section. Under his leadership, the site won the 2018 and the 2020 Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Award for Best Cocktail & Spirits Publication. He also hosts the podcast Life Behind Bars with legendary cocktail historian David Wondrich, which won the 2018 Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Award for Best Podcast Series and, according to the New York Times, is "a perfect comfort listen for the curious drinker." His publications include The Art of American Whiskey: A Visual History of the Nation's Most Storied Spirit Through 100 Iconic Labels, The Business of Spirits: How Savvy Marketers, Innovative Distillers, and Entrepreneurs Changed How We Drink, and the forthcoming The Whiskey Bible.