Miller, Anistatia (1948–), and Brown, Jared (1964–), the business partners and spouses behind the England-based Mixellany Limited (a consulting and publishing company specializing in the spirits, cocktails, and distillation industries), are among the pioneers of modern mixography and indeed of the cocktail renaissance in general. See cocktail renaissance and mixography.
Working almost exclusively as a duo since 1995, they first came together to collaborate on the self-publication of Shaken Not Stirred: A Celebration of the Martini. Brown and Miller have dedicated their careers and lives to the scholarship of the industry, piecing together artifacts, anecdotes, recipes, and lore to organize and share the facts, and dispel the myths in their field. Among the very first to appreciate the power of the internet as a tool for the historiography of drinks, they brought new sources and perspectives to the histories of spirits and mixed drinks in the more than thirty books that they have written together, tackling topics ranging from Cuban rum to champagne cocktails to the lives of famous bartenders. The coauthors have received numerous accolades, including the prestigious Gourmand World Cookbook Award for Best Drink History, for the two-volume Spirituous Journey: A History of Drink (2009–2010).
In addition to their published works and their frequent lectures, Brown and Miller have served seminal roles in preserving the industry’s past. In collaboration with Dale and Jill DeGroff, Ted “Dr. Cocktail” Haigh, David Wondrich, and some of the world’s most prominent cocktail historians, writers, and experts, the pair helped to found the Museum of the American Cocktail in 2004. See Museum of the American Cocktail. Shortly thereafter, they began an extensive three-year conservation project for the Exposition Universelle des Vins et Spiritueux (EUVS), a so-called permanent exhibition of wines and spirits owned by the Ricard family and housed on the island of Bendor off the French Riviera. See Pernod-Ricard. Culminating with the museum’s fiftieth anniversary in 2008, Brown and Miller collected more than five thousand wine and spirits labels from around the world, as well as scholarly papers on viniculture and distillation, and led the organization and preservation of thousands more relics including menus, photographs, and glassware. Chief among their contributions is editing under the EUVS aegis a searchable and comprehensive virtual library of scanned historical cocktail books dating to the early 1700s, a unique and invaluable resource for the student of drink history
Beyond the pair’s contributions to mixography, they have also helped to develop several spirits brands. Most notably, Brown is the master distiller at London-based Sipsmith, founded in 2009 as the first licensed copper-pot distillery in that city in nearly two hundred years (its license was granted after two years of lobbying against the city’s 1823 Gin Act, which had outlawed gin still operations under 1,800 liters). Brown has credited Sipsmith’s success to extensive research in early eighteenth- and nineteenth-century distilling books and the brand’s incorporation of traditional distilling methods and use of only historically accurate botanicals. See gin.
EUVS digital collection. http://euvslibrary.com (accessed March 25, 2021).
Miller, Anistatia, and Jared Brown. The Deans of Drink. London: Mixellany, 2013.
Mixellany. http://www.mixellany.com/services.html (accessed March 25, 2021).
By: Lauren Viera