Review: The Cocktail Cabinet Low/No and Rum Card Sets
If you are currently a member of Generation X with more miles in the rearview mirror than ahead of you, then you are old enough to remember when subscription card sets were an actual thing. If so, this will feel familiar in a way bordering on both the forensic and nostalgic. There was a stretch of time, mostly in the 1970s and 80s, when every subject or field of study could be converted and monetized into a monthly shipment of mailed cardstock: recipes, plants, birds, assorted zoo animals, and probably several things that had zero business being preserved on two-sided cards at all. You sent in the money, and some enterprising organization advertising on every cable channel would mail knowledge in neat little installments, often with a weird plastic box to keep everything together for safe storage or travelling.
Smith Street Books’ new series of cocktail card sets operate in that spirit. One set contains 50 recipes devoted exclusively to rum-based drinks. The other covers recipes either low- or no-alcohol: a useful distinction if the evening’s agenda includes either celebration by abv or a retreat from it. Though the authors differ and press materials don’t exactly spell out the genealogy, it feels fair to treat these sets as spiritual descendants of 2022’s Cocktail Cabinet reference volume. The family resemblance is strong: bold color, minimalist layouts, and illustrations living somewhere between mid-century design and a book by Eric Carle.
What makes the sets work is that they take the model seriously enough to preserve its utility, but lightly enough to avoid having the nostalgia land with a resounding thud. These are not museum pieces pretending to be barware. The recipes move from the reassuring and familiar to the new and, in some cases, peculiar, which is what you want from a collection promising some 101-level classics but also appears to allow a few challenges in the deck.
The low- and no-alcohol set carries a separate burden of proving that a drink can be fully-flavored and enjoyable without the aid of chemical scaffolding. It mostly succeeds by not trying to fake anything too aggressively. Instead of shrieking “mocktail at a midpoint casual family dining establishment with weird appetizers and yeast rolls,” it presents recipes with actual intention, and this alone earns it points. Something is reassuring about this level of seriousness: If a user must reach for a card instead of doom-scrolling their way into a beverage recipe with long-winded introductions, the card had better be worth reading.
A small quibble: Although it appears the non-alcohol cocktails are enumerated as the first 25 of the pack, some visual icon differentiating between low- and no-alcohol recipes would make quick reference easier. The cards are attractive enough to pardon the design omission, but in a busy environment, elegance and immediate usability are not always drinking buddies. It’s a minor complaint about a format that gets the pleasure of receiving information in small, effective doses. It is old-fashioned in the best way possible: decidedly charming in its non-digital delivery and thoroughly convinced that a deck of cards can improve your drink-making abilities.
Rum: A- [BUY IT NOW FROM AMAZON]
Low/No: B+ [BUY IT NOW FROM AMAZON]
each $25 per set
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