This New Australian Book Is One of the Most Exhaustive Cocktail Guides Ever Written

When Michael and Zara Madrusan closed The Everleigh and Bar Margaux in March, Melbourne lost two of its finest bars. Both were crucial in their own ways, but there were similarities between them: the speakeasy vibe, convivial service and – not least of all – classic cocktails made with hand-hewn ice and surgical precision.

But those weren’t the only common threads. The Ev and Margaux were both informed by a manual of thousands of recipes Michael had amassed and shared within elite bartending circles since his time working at influential New York bar Milk and Honey.

Now, the pair are “giving up the whole enchilada” in The Madrusan Cocktail Companion, an exhaustive guide to the pantheon of classic and modern drinks, with contributions from more than 100 of the world’s leading bartenders.

“We’ve been organising and collecting these drinks for 20 years now,” Michael tells Broadsheet. “From Milk and Honey, to Everleigh and Margaux, this has been the one resource all our bartenders have been using.”

“We had a responsibility to get it out,” adds Zara. “It shouldn’t just be bound to us. It needs to be shared with the world.”

The book, edited by respected journalist Matty Hirsch and complete with gorgeous photography by Mark Roper, includes more than 2800 recipes split into 27 “branches” of classic drinks, from the Collins to the Martini. That means if you’re a Martini fan, for example, you can flick to that branch for the history of the drink, plus hundreds of recipe variations of it, organised by ingredient.

“Of the nearly 3000 drinks in there, we’ve found the origin for almost all of them, in every category,” says Michael. “There is nothing in here we wouldn’t be proud to serve.”

Some of the earliest recipes date back to the 1860s. It took the pair 18 months to rejig them for modern tastes, as well as the professional and home bartending worlds. But that laborious process was the catalyst for an important “full circle moment”.

“When we started cleaning the recipes up, Zara had the idea to reach out to our peers from the old days,” says Michael. “Suddenly, it became a community book, which is amazing because this project was originally started for the community.”

“To be able to reconnect with the global industry at a time when, you know, we’ve had a rough year. That’s been so powerful for us,” adds Zara.

“Having big names like Dave Wondrich, Jim Meehan and Jeff Morganthaler sign off on the book – that was it for us. We don’t even need to sell one. We knew we’d done it right,” says Michael.

“It’s a beautiful legacy,” he adds. “This book will write cocktail lists for years to come.”

The Madrusan Cocktail Companion is out now through Murdoch Books. RRP $69.99