Sunset Cocktails (Guillaume Aubry)

From golden ice cubes to crepuscular charcoal dust: sunset-inspired cocktail recipes to enliven that special hour

This book is an invitation to transform the simple contemplation of a well-mixed cocktail into a sensory experience of “drinking the sunset.”
In 2020, French artist and architect Guillaume Aubry (born 1982) asked the celebrated Paris-based American mixologist Sterling Hudson to translate his artistic research on sunsets into cocktail recipes. Based on Aubry’s research and Hudson’s expertise, Sunset Cocktails presents 12 cocktails inspired by the beauty of a sunset, from the dazzling “Regulus,” whose saffron ice cube glows gold once submerged in vermouth, to the “Grand Soir,” a liquid sunset that infuses a dusting of charcoal into a crisp glass of vodka.

With luxurious full-color photographs of the cocktails and the sunsets that inspired them, this volume encourages readers to consider mixology as a creative form of expression in the larger context of art history; in addition to Aubry’s own writing on the subject, Japanese poet Ryoko Sekiguchi provides a luminous afterword to prepare readers' imaginations for an aesthetic and gustatory experience. A small-format, easily accessible volume, Sunset Cocktails presents Aubry and Hudson’s collaboration with a uniquely poetic flair, encouraging readers to reflect upon society’s relationship with sunsets and our collective aesthetic experience of quotidian moments of beauty, whether those manifest as a sunset, a fancy cocktail, or both.