An illustrated history of cocktails

The Santa Rosa Press-Democrat (archive link) interviewed David Wondrich, a historian from New York who's turned his research on cocktails into a graphic novel with an artist named Dean Kotz:

New York-based cocktail historian David Wondrich had most recently finished editing an 860-plus-page compendium of knowledge about cocktail history when the opportunity arose to share cocktail history through a different medium: as a graphic nonfiction book.

The author took on the challenge, teaming up with illustrator Dean Kotz to take readers on a journey around the world, following the world’s drinking preferences from Colonial-era punches to Prohibition, from the rise of the 1930s tiki trend to the modern-day craft cocktail movement and beyond — plus much more along the way, including an array of cocktail recipes. We recently caught up with Wondrich to learn more.

Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

Q: What inspired you to tell the history of cocktails through a comic book?

A: I had thought about doing a cocktail-themed comic book for quite a long time. I was talking to Ten Speed Press a couple years back, and they mentioned their comic book history series and asked if I would be interested in doing that. I said yes.

Q: You cover so much history in the book. How did you go about curating that history and figuring out which stories to include?

A: I was very familiar with the history because I’ve been writing cocktail history for 25 years. For my last book before this one, I was the editor-in-chief and principal writer of the “Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails,” a huge reference book that includes histories and biographies of famous bartenders, as well as other related information. So a lot of the information was pretty fresh in my mind. That said, I always research my books anew and see what else I can find and what other connections I can make. There were some periods in some places that were completely new to me, and that was fun. I tried to tell as many stories as I possibly could. I’ve written at length, for instance, about the history of African American bartenders, which was really deeply buried. I also did a lot of research on Asian and Pacific Islander bartenders in America.

Q: What was it like translating that history into comic book form? How did that process work with the illustrator?

A: It was really hard. I did this not because it was easy, but because I thought it would be easy. But it turned out to be really difficult. My editor insisted that this should be a real history with documentation, so I couldn’t skip over bits or dramatize stuff too much. I had to make sure that it gave you a good, solid, accurate history, while at the same time trying to make it as lively as possible. [...]

Q: What are you hoping people take away from the book?

A: I’m hoping they get a sense of the people involved. These drinks are things that were made by people, for people. I’m hoping they can see themselves in the book and find what really resonates with them in the tradition of mixing drinks. My main hope is that people find it interesting, that it gives them stuff to talk about, and that they can understand where their favorite drinks came from.

The only problem I have with this is that it also appears to be about the history of how alcohol's made, since there are cocktails made with liquor, and I don't consider it healthy to drink liquor. Fruit cocktails are decidedly far better so long as they're not made with liquor/alcohol. I'm sure the history of cocktails is one worth telling, but does that mean it's healthy to drink? Not really, unless maybe it's wine-based. So congratulations to the guy for producing this GN, but I don't think drinking alcohol should be encouraged, even through comic panels. What would be far better is if there's comics teaching why alcohol, even cocktail-based, isn't a good example, and there are some out there, no doubt, taking an objective view of liquor and alcohol. I just wish Wondrich and Kotz's comic did so too, but somehow, I doubt it.