Winner of the 2014 Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Award for Best New Cocktail/Bartending Book, Beachbum Berry's Potions of the Caribbean strains five centuries of West Indian history through a cocktail shaker, serving up 77 vintage Caribbean drink recipes - 16 of them lost recipes that have never before been published anywhere in any form, and another 19 that have never been published in book form. Even more delicious are the stories of the people who created, or served, or simply drank these drinks. As a hybrid of street-smart gumshoe, anthropologist and mixologist (The Los Angeles Times), Jeff "Beachbum" Berry is uniquely qualified to tell this epic story-with-recipes, lavishly illustrated with vintage graphics and rare historical photos.

About the Author:

One of Imbibe magazine’s “25 Most Influential Cocktail Personalities of the Past Century” and one of Drinks International’s “100 Most Influential Figures,” Jeff “Beachbum” Berry is the author of seven books on vintage tropical drinks, which published for the first time anywhere the lost recipes of Tiki’s mid-century golden age. Esquire calls Jeff “one of the instigators of the cocktail revolution” and Food & Wine “one of the world’s leading rum experts,” while The New York Times cites him as “the Indiana Jones of Tiki drinks” and The Los Angeles Times as “A hybrid of street-smart gumshoe, anthropologist and mixologist.”

Jeff’s been featured on the Travel Channel’s “Food Paradise” TV series, The Discovery Channel, PBS Television and National Public Radio; he’s also been profiled in The Washington Post , USA Today, The New York Times and Wine Enthusiast magazine.

Jeff’s original cocktail recipes have been printed in publications around the world, from Bon Appetit and The Huffington Post to over 20 international recipe books, including the venerable Mr. Boston Official Bartenders Guide.

And now Jeff’s drinks are being served at his restaurant in New Orleans, Beachbum Berry’s Latitude 29, which has won critical acclaim in Esquire , Playboy, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, The Houston Chronicle, GQ, Travel + Leisure, Town & Country, Southern Living, New Orleans magazine, and the Food Network.

With Martin Doudoroff, Jeff co-created Total Tiki for iPad and iPhone, a drink recipe app which Macworld magazine calls “beautifully rendered and, thanks to Berry’s tireless reporting, impeccably sourced.”

Jeff’s also co-created a line of Tiki barware with Cocktail Kingdom, which Imbibe hails as “especially notable because it revives old styles of essential glassware that were previously almost impossible to find.”