One night in 2008, Adam Slavík was sipping an Almond Cigar—a vivid amaretto, rum and lime concoction—at Bugsy’s Bar in Prague, when he was struck by an concept for a guide. Though he had penned a information to the town’s greatest bars 5 years earlier, this time round he was envisioning one thing extra formidable.
Slavík, who grew up in Havlíčkův Brod, a small city some 90 minutes southeast of the Czech Republic’s animated capital, was “at all times drawn to the middle of occasions, the large metropolis the place tradition lives,” he says. Prague’s booming cocktail scene was intrinsic to that attract.
Particularly, he was enthralled by Bugsy’s, a swanky, pioneering lounge that debuted in 1995, a heady period of newly launched post-communist bliss. On the time, most carefree locals and curious vacationers hightailed it to beer bars. Bugsy’s profusion of basic Gimlets and Outdated-Fashioneds stood out. Slavík paid his first go to as a college scholar. “The environment, the exceptional cocktails and the persona of the proprietor, Václav Vojíř—it was a bar live performance,” he says of the sensory attract.
Buoyed by the magical aura of that night time at Bugsy’s 15 years in the past, Slavík determined to pay homage to the skills like Vojíř by releasing an ever-changing guide that, he hoped, would make its means across the globe. At every cease, he imagined {that a} bartender would submit an authentic recipe and maybe a missive, then cross it alongside to the subsequent bartender of their selecting.
An bizarre journal wouldn’t suffice, nevertheless. Slavík desired a dignified, majestic tome, one that may put on nicely by means of the ages and stand up to frequent worldwide sojourns. To create the bespoke guide, he labored with the famend bookbinder Jiří Fogl, who handed away in 2022, to create a Cognac-hued leather-based magnificence crammed with 333 pages (a nod to the Czech tongue tornado referencing 333 silver syringes squirting over 333 silver roofs) of handmade paper produced at a late Sixteenth-century Czech mill. Slavík known as it The Bartenders’ Travelling Ebook.
“One bartender would possibly connect a further letter peppered with insights; one other a postcard from a significant location, imbuing [it] with a sure compelling enigma that isn’t not like that of the boomerang.”
In Might 2009, Slavík offered it to Vojíř, its inaugural recipient. Vojíř added a private observe and cocktail recipe. He then traveled to Munich to cross the guide alongside to Charles Schumann, of Schumann’s, on the time a revered bartender; he has since been mired in controversy after a string of sexist remarks.
Since then, the guide has taken the scenic route all over the world. Whereas most of its pages stay clean, the remaining are dominated by the distinctive scrawls of some 30 trade luminaries, together with Julio Bermejo, Julio Cabrera, Javier de las Muelas, Erik Lorincz, Kazuo Uyeda and Stanislav Vadrna. (As of now, it’s a boys’ membership; it has but to make its method to a extra numerous group of bartenders, however hopefully that can change because the guide continues to flow into.) Guidelines are few, however taken critically. Nobody, for instance, is allowed to submit {a photograph} of one other particular person’s web page or reveal content material that isn’t their very own with out asking. One bartender would possibly connect a further letter peppered with insights; one other a postcard from a significant location, imbuing The Bartenders’ Travelling Ebook with a sure compelling enigma that’s not not like that of the boomerang. These drinks, usually photographs, accompanied by a message, are introduced from one bartender’s institution to a different’s as a token of respect, and are additionally cloaked in secrecy.
“It is among the coolest initiatives I’ve skilled in my complete profession,” says Giancarlo Mancino, the visionary behind Mancino Vermouth. He was invited into the guide’s pages by Bacardí alum David Cordoba, aka “Mr. Daiquiri,” now founding father of The Lovers and La Forza rums. Flipping by means of the pages, seeing contributions from the late Gary “Gaz” Regan and Salim Khoury (the previous head bartender at The American Bar inside London’s Savoy Lodge), was particularly emotional for Mancino. The guide made its method to him throughout the peak of the pandemic, and he saved it in his possession for one and a half years, ready for the correct alternative to offer it a brand new residence.
“I wished to cross it off to Salvatore Calabrese, my mentor,” he recollects. In late 2021, understanding that fellow bartenders could be in London for the World’s 50 Greatest Bars award, Mancino orchestrated a small gathering of them at The Donovan Bar, the place Calabrese holds court docket as of late. The attendees, together with Peter Dorelli, Giuliano Morandin, Alessandro Palazzi, Agostino Perrone, Jared Brown and Ian Burrell conversed and drank aperitivi whereas the guide made the rounds.
“It now has a sparsely populated Instagram account, its personal web site and an e-mail tackle, however its keepers are adamant about its contents remaining freed from a digital footprint.”
The guide additionally reached the USA—and acquired misplaced for a spell, too. Not lengthy after The Lifeless Rabbit opened in New York Metropolis’s Monetary District in 2013, Simon Ford, of Fords Gin fame, left the guide with co-owners Jack McGarry and Sean Muldoon (the latter is now not a part of the bar), who ultimately despatched it over to Jim Meehan at PDT. McGarry continues to be impressed by the guide’s significance. “It’s an unimaginable hyperlink and useful resource, perpetually spreading all through the cocktail world,” he says. “It incorporates info, recommendation and recipes from bartending icons, a few of whom have left us.”
Simone Caporale, co-founder of Sips Drinkery Home in Barcelona, is the guide’s present keeper. Regardless of the plethora of cocktail studying materials on the market, none holds a candle to The Bartenders’ Travelling Ebook, he says. “It has develop into a bible.” Its presence, he provides, is particularly poignant in right now’s chaotic digital world, the place human relationships are sometimes sidelined. “[It’s] timeless, it helps to remind us of sure issues, just like the getting old of a spirit, that aren’t meant to be quick.”
Serving to to make sure the guide maintains momentum is William Pravda, common supervisor at The Hudson Rooms, the rooftop bar on the Capella Hanoi resort in Vietnam. Like Slavík, Pravda is a local of the Czech Republic, and Slavík, impressed by Pravda’s dedication to the trade and dedication to teamwork, appointed him the guide’s custodian, “to offer it a little bit of construction, function and publicity,” recounts Pravda.
What does the function of “custodian” truly entail? Final yr, Pravda flew all the best way to Bar Convent in Berlin to convey it from the bar of Serhan Kusaksizoglu, aka Papa Charly, the company director of bars and ideas at Kempinski Lodges, on to Caporale. (Kusaksizoglu was in Asia on the time.) Pravda and Slavík have additionally developed a programming plan to ease the guide into the limelight, whereas preserving its authentic mission. It now has a sparsely populated Instagram account, its personal web site (which is outwardly present process a redesign) and an e-mail tackle, however its keepers are adamant about its contents remaining freed from a digital footprint. In reality, after I requested Pravda if I may merely have the names of the featured drink recipes, he refused to inform me. “There needs to be some thriller round it,” he says.
