Booze writers are in general nerdish and insular. The beer boys, with their compulsory beards, live in the pub and are looked down upon both by the wine writers (who live in glass houses) and the 'Rudolphs', as the red-nosed specialists of the spirits world could be termed. As for the writers of cocktail books, no living specimen has been taken since the first publication of The Savoy Cocktail Book in 1930 rendered all subsequent efforts redundant.

This tendency explains why there are no books that span the whole subject of booze, as if people who drink wine might never enjoy a cocktail or even a beer. Grogan's Companion to Drink will plug the yawning gap for a single source of information for, say, the key ingredients in a Pimms, for a pithy tutorial on how the hierarchy of the wines of Bordeaux is structured (what are people on about when they refer to a 'cru bourgeois') or for a round-up of all those Polish beers on the shelves. It will not only avoid being nerdish and insular, it will also avoid being patronising, pompous or pretentious (and that's just the 'p's). So whether you're looking for a great drink for GBP 2.99 (Tesco's value red wine in a carton) or if you finally want to understand what it was you were drinking when you supped Agua de Valencia, it's the perfect gift for those who drink as well as taste.