A Toast to Death & Co

The founders of Manhattan's iconic cocktail mecca break down the rules of mastering mixology

- By Jared Paul Stern

Ask any true cocktail enthusiast to name the top ten bars in the world, and Death & Co will surely make the grade. Opened on New Year's Eve 2006/2007 in Manhattan's East Village, it quickly became the standard-bearer for the newly emerging classic cocktail and mixology renaissance, which was given a massive boost when a quirky new show called Mad Men premiered later that year.

Death & Co has since opened equally alluring locations in Denver and Los Angeles, and has spawned a blue-chip hospitality group called Gin & Luck, along with two essential cocktail books-Cocktail Codex, which won a James Beard award, and Death & Co: Modern Classic Cocktails—which has now been joined by a third volume capturing the current cocktail zeitgeist, titled Death & Co: Welcome Home, by co-founders David Kaplan and Alex Day with author Nick Fauchald.

“Death & Co's approach to cocktails has always been driven by a dual dedication to quality and elegance. Kaplan writes in the book's introduction. Our drinks are rooted in classic cocktails, with honest, direct flavors and compositions. We welcome innovation, of course, but it is not our driving motivation. Most of all, we want our cocktails to elicit a response that's not ‘Hmm, that's interesting, but Wow, that's fucking delicious!