Tonic #8
210 x 274 mm, 156 pages
London, UK
Biannual
First published in 2020
Co-founders: Rob Ellison and Benita Finanzio
Editor: Juliet Rix
Large-format biannual Tonic is a self-described ‘heady cocktail of drink, travel and adventure’, featuring global stories covering alcohol’s consumption, history and associated customs.
Abstract painter and award-winning bartender Josh Linfitt contributed the cover art for this turquoise eighth edition; inside, he speaks to Andrew Church about the symbiotic relationship between creativity and alcohol. Elsewhere, Deanna Thomas profiles the Peak District bar owner swapping wine for water, Kate Wickers travels to Calabria to indulge in a glass of the region’s beloved Amaro with the locals, and editor Juliet Rix investigates London’s ‘temperance’ statues—commemorating the falsely vilified women at the centre of a 19th century sobriety campaign rooted in social reform.
On the Journal:
At work with Juliet Rix: ‘It is amazing the tales there are behind the booze in our bottles. Did you know that NASCAR—American stock car racing—grew directly out of the crazy cross-country driving of the prohibition liquor producers running moonshine in souped up cars to escape the ‘revenue men’? Or that the one thing US founding father Thomas Jefferson could not do—and really, really wanted to!—was make a decent bottle of wine?’
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