ALICE LASCELLES

Alice Lascelles is an award-winning drinks journalist, author and presenter

She writes a popular column for the Financial Times covering wine, spirits and bar culture, and can often be found talking about drinks on BBC Radio 4 and on the TV. 

Her articles and columns have also appeared in The Times, The Economist, Wired, Monocle, Vice, Wallpaper*, Food & Wine, Noble Rot and many trade and specialist publications including the authoritative Oxford Companion to Spirits & Cocktails.

Her best-selling guide to the Martini, The Martini: The Ultimate Guide to a Cocktail Icon (Quadrille Sept 2024) was voted BBC Food Programme Drinks Book of 2025 and declared "positively paradigmatic" by Nigella Lawson. Her handbook for the home bartender, The Cocktail Edit: Everything You Need to Know About How to Make All The Drinks That Matter (Quadrille 2022) was named a Book of the Year by the The Times, The Telegraph, the Financial Times and Esquire. 

Alice is an expert on the production and provenance of drinks, but she also loves the stories that go with them. Her subjects have ranged from the rise of Japanese whisky and the science of bubbles, to profiles of rapper-turned sommelier Dynamite MC and the bar scene that helped regenerate New Orleans post-Katrina.

She enjoys public speaking and has hosted talks and tastings from London's Southbank Centre and the Speyside Whisky Festival through to Washington DC’s Kennedy Centre. 

Her awards include Fortnum & Mason Drinks Writer of the Year and IWSC Spirits Communicator of the Year. She has also been made a Keeper of the Quaich and a Chevalier of the Ordre des Coteaux de Champagne in recognition of her work. 

Before she became a journalist, Alice studied English at Cambridge and spent several years working in the arts. She's also musician with a White Stripes tour and several releases - including an album under the name Alice Gun – under her belt. Her other great loves are gardening, dogs and fell walking in the Lake District. 

She lives in London with her husband and two sons.