Imbibe 75 Person to Watch: Robert Simonson

Astute readers may recognize Robert Simonson’s name from his frequent bylines in Imbibe as a contributing editor. (Or, possibly, from one of his other regular cocktail-writing roles, such as at The New York Times.)

“It’s meant to be kind of a popular compendium of any kind of cocktail subject that you could think of.”

This past fall, he published the latest in his expanding range of books on the subject, The Encyclopedia of Cocktails, which continues his quest to document the contemporary cocktail renaissance and put it in a larger historical context. “It’s meant to be kind of a popular compendium of any kind of cocktail subject that you could think of,” Simonson says of the new book. “The subtitle of the book is ‘The People, Bars, and Drinks, with more than 100 recipes,’ and that’s what you’re going to find in there. You’re going to find entries on bars both in the past and present, people living and dead, and, well, most of the famous cocktails in history and some oddball entries as well.”

For Simonson, the new book marks a continuation of his work to document the craft cocktail renaissance as it’s happening, and to put today’s cocktail culture in an appropriate context. “If you read a lot of reference books, a lot of history books about cocktails, it’s primarily going to deal with a lot of dead people, mainly dead white males. And with this book, I think the entries that are about people are kind of evenly divided between folks in the past, and folks that are right here in the present and still operating, still applying their trade. And so you can see that arc, that continuum.”

While a significant part of Simonson’s success in his field rests on his diligence and his enthusiasm for the subject, there’s also an aspect of perfect timing—of diving into cocktail coverage at a time in history when the field is showing so much growth and vibrance. “I don’t think there’s been any other period in cocktails—except in the late 19th century leading up to Prohibition—that’s been as important as the last 25 or 30 years,” Simonson says. “I think [the subject is] enormous, and that’s why I continue to write about it, and why I think the subject is fairly inexhaustible.”

Click here to read more about some of 2024’s other Imbibe 75 People and Places to Watch.