Book Review: In Session: Low-Proof Cocktails for High-Quality Occasions
There comes a point when the concept of “fun” morphs into things taking place before midnight. Nights once stretching into the daybreak, fueled by questionable decisions and a bottle of 151, begin to feel less like adventure and more like a painful debt still being repaid with interest, days later. For most of us, this time is viewed with relief in the rearview mirror. But the urge to get together, commiserate on the state of our eroding health and rapidly diminishing savings, and to have a drink with good company never quite fades. In Session gets that impulse and has some thoughts.
The book, a collaboration of low-proof cocktail recipes, small plates, and music playlists, offers up a new GPS for the next era of enjoyment, one where the measure of a good night isn’t how the afterparty goes from Friday to Sunday, but how well you can recall what happened. Inside, there are 36 cocktails, from variants on time-tested favorites to some new ideas, each paired with 24 complementary small plates and eight curated playlists arranged by theme, or as the book calls them, “sessions.” Whether it’s brunch, cookout, big game, golden hour, book club, dinner party, holiday, or late night, In Session meets each mood without excess nostalgia or pretension.
The photography throughout is abstract and atmospheric, evoking, perhaps unintentionally, the cinematic minimalism of Nicola Kuperus’ early 2000s Car Series. There’s that same sense of suspended motion and implied tension: moments caught between the action, where color and composition do as much storytelling as the food or drink itself. Nothing feels overworked, and it’s highly artful without forcing it down the reader’s throat.
And then there’s the music, an unexpected masterstroke that will please even the most snobbish of music connoisseurs. The playlists, curated by Grammy-winning drummer Charlie Hall of The War on Drugs, are not an afterthought or gimmick. They’re genuine mood-setters, drawn from a deep and discerning catalog and knowledge base. Hall resists the temptation to stack the lists with algorithm-friendly staples and instead digs for quietly appropriate for the moment: familiar but not too obvious, environment over dominant center point. Alongside well-known names, he provides long-overdue space to artists like The Blue Nile, Gábor Szabó, and Mark Hollis, musicians who are masters of atmosphere, color, and restraint. This curation carries through even in the details. On the holiday playlist, Hall includes Marvin Gaye’s “I Want to Come Home for Christmas,” a heartbreakingly beautiful choice (and one of my favorites from the vast Motown Christmas vault), capturing melancholy and warmth. It’s these touches that give In Session a personal rather than prescriptive feel, as if you’re pulling records from Hall’s neatly organized Ikea shelving units.
As cocktail books go, this one is firmly grounded in contemporary style. It doesn’t chase novelty, nor does it fall back on campy swagger that sometimes infects the genre. The recipes are inventive but practical, and relatively easy to make or put your creative flourishes on the base as you feel. In Session gets that not every celebration requires bravado, not every drink must carry a profound declaration. Sometimes, a session is simply a well-made cocktail, some friends, and a record humming in the background. Just in time for the season when excess becomes a virtue, In Session offers a different kind of indulgence: one of ease. It’s for those who have outgrown the noise but not the joy, and for anyone looking to keep the spirit of gathering alive, albeit at a much lower proof and higher quality than in one’s twenties, or in some instances… thirties.
A- / $27 [BUY IT NOW FROM AMAZON]
The post Book Review: In Session: Low-Proof Cocktails for High-Quality Occasions appeared first on Drinkhacker: The Insider’s Guide to Good Drinking.