American author and bartender Dale DeGroff on the tools and temperaments of the mixology trade

How did you get into bartending? “I wanted to be an actor and went to New York in 1969. I did a series of crazy jobs – putting up posters, moving man, chauffeur­ing Zsa Zsa Gabor, packing Gideon Bibles to send to hotels, dishwashing.“Then I worked as a waiter at Charley O’s, an Irish pub that famous restaurateur Joe Baum opened in the Rockefeller Center. One day after lunch service the manager came in in a panic. She needed a bartender to do a catering job at Gracie Mansion [the official…