The New York Times -bestselling guide to botany and booze celebrates its 10th anniversary with
an updated edition — now including a guide to planting your very own cocktail garden to go with
more than fifty drink recipes. This fascinating go-to text about the plants that make our
drinks is the ideal gift book for every cocktail aficionado the perfect drinks book for every
plant-lover. Sake began with a grain of rice. Scotch emerged from barley tequila from agave
rum from sugarcane bourbon from corn. Thirsty yet? In The Drunken Botanist Amy Stewart
explores the dizzying array of herbs flowers trees fruits and fungi that humans have
through ingenuity inspiration and sheer desperation contrived to transform into alcohol over
the centuries. Of all the extraordinary and obscure plants that have been fermented and
distilled a few are dangerous some are downright bizarre and one is as ancient as
dinosaurs—but each represents a unique cultural contribution to our global drinking traditions
and our history. This charming concoction of biology chemistry history etymology and
mixology—with delightful drawings tasty cocktail recipes and fun factoids throughout—will
make you the most popular guest at any cocktail party. “A book that makes familiar drinks
seem new again . . . Through this horticultural lens a mixed drink becomes a cornucopia of
plants.”—NPR' s Morning Edition “Amy Stewart has a way of making gardening seem exciting
even a little dangerous.” — The New York Times
