From the outside, a craft bartender is one part wizard, one part magician, and one part scholar—able to pull obscure cocktails out of the ether and combine esoteric ingredients in ways never seen, all while serving eight other guests. The reality is a bit less glamorous, though still impressive. To find out more, I spoke with Dave Kaplan, co-owner of legendary NYC bar Death + Company, who’s in Seattle this week to promote the recently published Death & Co: Modern Classic Cocktails (they staged a “takeover” at Rob Roy Tuesday night to showcase drinks from the book).

“It’s OK for it to seem like a bit of a magic show,” Kaplan explains. “As long as every step has practice and thought behind it.” That ethos is super-apparent in the book, which walks through virtually every aspect of setting up a bar, from the obvious (which spirits to stock) to the arcane (a discussion of tap-icers. Google it). The level of detail can be intimidating to even a fairly experienced home bartender, but years of rigorous testing have gone into the advice that permeates the pages.

Nowhere is that certainty more needed than when confronted by one of the more vexing challenges facing modern craft bartenders: the ubiquitous and pernicious “Dealer’s Choice.” It might be popular with patrons, but it’s always a headache for whomever’s behind the stick. Guests have a hard time explaining what they want, and while it might not seem like it, just throwing random ingredients together rarely if ever results in an enjoyable experience. The way to avoid that crapshoot is to have done all the creative work well before the bar opens for the evening, and that’s the model that Death + Company follows. “Every drink that goes across our bar has been tested,” Kaplan assures me. “Or if it’s a classic cocktail, we’ve at least discussed it and figured out what our house style is.” That degree of control and precision is a hallmark of all of Kaplan’s bars.

While staging pop-ups at bars in 13 cities besides Rob Roy, he’s also getting to see just how much craft-cocktail culture has spread beyond the incubators of New York and San Francisco. “Every city I’ve been to on this tour has had their own style and scene,” Kaplan says. “They’re pulling together all these different threads, from New York and L.A. and San Francisco, and mixing it with their own local influences to create something unique and exciting.”

You can’t learn to bartend from a book, but Death & Co aims to be both an enjoyable read and an authoritative source for recipes, technique, and style. While personal tastes might vary a bit (they lean heavily on Rittenhouse rye, which I’ve never loved), few bar books can match its combination of verve and veracity.

thebarcode@seattleweekly.com