This year, you may think your vote doesn’t matter, that your single ballot can’t change the outcome. Well, you’re wrong.
Goodreads.com, the popular social media forum for readers, is holding its annual “Choice Awards.” Goodreads has a spirits book as a finalist in the Food & Cookbooks category. Smuggler’s Cove: Exotic Cocktails, Rum, and the Cult of Tiki by Martin and Rebecca Cate deserves your vote. Tequila Mockingbird won this honor in 2013, with The Drunken Botanist as the second runner up.
You’re not only voting for a book that brought forth incredible rum, Tiki and drink education, but you’re voting for an entire genre.
Spirits books struggle to garner respect in mainstream press and with readers. They’re often dismissed as gift books and people like James Beard Award Winner David Wondrich, James Beard Award finalist Matthew Rowley and the Cates knock back the stereotype that drinks titles are nothing more than gifts for your drunk uncle.
After Cate wins this Goodreads award, because you’re voting right now (right?), we just need one to make Oprah’s book club.
Anybody know Lady O?
Fred Minnick is the author of Bourbon: The Rise, Fall & Rebirth of An American Whiskey