After being raised in British pubs, and being put to work as a bartender by his parents when he was just 14 years old, Gary Regan fled to New York City in 1973. For over two decades he tended bar at a variety of dives in Manhattan, and in 1990 he started to write about his favorite subjects—drinks and drinking. It wasn’t long before he noticed that his work encouraged liquor companies to send him free bottles of booze. He quit the bar business immediately, started to write on a full-time basis, and in 1991 his first book, The Bartender’s Bible, was published.

Between 1995 and 1998 Gary, together with Mardee Haidin Regan co-wrote The Book of Bourbon and Other Fine American Whiskey, The Bourbon Companion, New Classic Cocktails, and The Martini Companion. Since then Mardee wrote The Bartender’s Best Friend (2002), and Gary wrote The Joy of Mixology in 2003. He is currently working on The Bartender’s Gin Compendium, a book that is scheduled to be published in Fall, 2009.

Gary writes The Cocktailian, a bi-weekly column, for The San Francisco Chronicle. In the past he has written regular columns in The Malt Advocate, Nation’s Restaurant News, Cheers Magazine, and The Wine Enthusiast, concentrating on cocktails, bartenders, and the cocktailian craft. His work is also published in magazines in the U.K., Australia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Switzerland, Russia and Austria. He also conducted Cocktails in the Country, a series of two-day bartender workshops, for seven years, from 2001 until 2007.

Gary and Mardee host www.ardentspirits.com, publish a free e-mail newsletter, Ardent Spirits, and maintain a Worldwide Bartender Database that serves to put spirits companies in touch with their most important ambassadors: The men and women who hold forth from behind slabs of mahogany all over the globe.

Gary lives in a small village in the Hudson Valley, about 50 miles north of the Big Apple.