Cocktail Kingdom

Greg Boehm started Cocktail Kingdom during the cocktail revival of the early 2000s to give bartenders proper tools. The New York company makes and distributes professional barware and keeps a library of more than 3,000 vintage cocktail books.

About Cocktail Kingdom

Based in
New York, New York
Founded
early 2000s
Known for
professional barware and reprinted cocktail books

Cocktail Kingdom grew out of the cocktail revival of the early 2000s. Founder Greg Boehm saw that bar professionals lacked the proper tools for the craft, and set out to supply them. The company now makes and distributes professional barware, including designs of its own, and keeps a showroom on West 8th Street in New York.

Cocktail Kingdom also keeps what it calls the largest known collection of antique cocktail books, more than 3,000 vintage titles on mixology and drinking culture, and has sold reproductions from it.

Cocktail Kingdom questions

Why do bartenders stir some cocktails and shake others?

Stirring a drink over ice chills and dilutes it without adding air, so a cocktail of spirits and other clear ingredients, such as a Manhattan or a martini with its vermouth, stays clear and silky. Drinks with citrus juice, cream, milk or egg get shaken instead, because those ingredients need to be fully blended in, and shaking also whips in tiny air bubbles that give the drink a lighter texture and a slightly cloudy look. Cocktail Kingdom's mixing glasses for the stirred kind include its own Yarai line.

What is a Nick & Nora glass?

A small cocktail glass, about 5 ounces, with a long stem, a high-sided bowl and a narrow mouth. In 1987, running the bar at New York's newly reopened Rainbow Room, bartender Dale DeGroff found the design in a 1930s glassware catalog and named it for Nick and Nora Charles, the detective couple of The Thin Man. Compared with a wide-mouthed martini glass it spills less, keeps the drink colder and holds the aroma close.

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