Frida Kahlo. Virginia Woolf. Gloria Steinem.
All brilliant.
Margaret Atwood. Dolly Parton. Meryl Streep.
All intelligent.
Hari Nef. Mindy Kaling. Maya Angelou.
All remarkable.
Joan Didion. Serena Williams. Zaha Hadid.
All diverse.
Each one of these women is iconic in her own way. And with the release of Vancouver writer Jennifer Croll’s Free the Tipple: Kickass Cocktails Inspired by Iconic Women (Prestel, September 2018), imbibers can raise glasses to all of them.
Bringing together a group of 60 heroines from the worlds of art, politics, science, pop culture, and sport, Croll brilliantly captures the diversity of the female voice through a set of specialty drinks. Alongside illustrations by New York City-based multidisciplinary artist Kelly Shami, the book’s recipes reflect the style, strength, and legacy of each icon.
Consider the Jane Goodall, for example: the fruity banana daiquiri takes its inspiration from the pioneering primatologist’s work in the Tanzanian jungle studying chimpanzees and primates. For Margaret Atwood, “the grand dame of dystopia,” as Croll puts it, a deep red cocktail is an ode to one of the author’s finest works, The Handmaid’s Tale; the rum-based bevvy, with maraschino liqueur and pomegranate juice, represents the robes each handmaid wears. Then there is the Beyoncé; it is made with lemonade, of course, in an ode to her groundbreaking album of the same name. And perhaps one of the book’s most exquisite drinks is a red-wine slushy made for Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq, who grew up in Nunavut. The cocktail calls for one very special ingredient: aupilaktunnguat, an arctic flower that grows in the frozen Canadian North.
Celebrating women and their achievements is always a good idea. And now it’s a more delicious pastime than ever before.
There are more cocktails where this came from.
