Cocktail history is marked by many fabulous characters, like the nineteenth century New York bartender Jerry Thomas who was the first to record the classic Cognac-based recipes. It was he too who turned the making of a cocktail into the art and spectacle that we see in the style of today’s young bartending stars.

The role of Cognac in cocktails was lost in the late nineteenth century when the phylloxera disease caused shortages and Cognac was priced out of the popular cocktail market. To tell the story of the cognac cocktails at the heart of the original mixology movement, the House of Rémy Martin asked star illustrator Kevin Manach to capture that dramatic spirit that is the essence of the cocktail moment.