Will I love By the Smoke and the Smell?

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… show more.

From his time defining the cocktails at the Slanted Door, Vogler has been on a mission to look beyond the industrially produced and artificially flavored and colored spirits that line most bars.

Spirits with a sense of place, like great wines, made with the care and respect, that speak of a region and the hand of the maker are carefully explored in each chapter. Travel with Vogler as he visits distillers around the world in search of singular spirits.

If the wine world has Kermit Lynch and Neil Rosenthal, merchants who wrote elegant travel memoirs, the cocktail world has Thad Vogler. Both barman and proselytizer of good liquor (i.e. non-industrially produced booze), Vogler tells the story of his time on the road searching for mixed drink ingredients that have meaning, depth, history, and above all -- quality. Personal and engaging, By the Smoke and the Smell is a tale of passion, and is one of those rare industry books that is as interesting to cocktail veterans as neophytes.