He’s published books about Ernest Hemingway, the history of the Manhattan cocktail, and the drinking scene of 1920s Paris. You might have even met him last summer, when he sat in as guest bartender at Northport’s Yard & Lake for a few nights. Now part-time local resident and long-time mixology expert Philip Greene is preparing to publish his latest book, titled Sours: A History of the World's Most Storied Cocktail Style, and its his most Leelanau-indebted project yet.

A tribute to the “irresistible allure of citrus and sours when paired with spirits,” Sours drops next Tuesday, February 25 via New York City publishing house Union Square & Co. In addition to more than 100 different cocktail recipes, the book recounts the history and folklore of the sour cocktail and its many variations – a list that includes the margarita, the whiskey sour, the cosmopolitan, and the daiquiri. Crucially, for local readers, the book also includes a cocktail that area residents might recognize as an original Leelanau creation.

“I think I have 110 recipes in the book, but one of them is definitely of special local interest,” Greene says. “If readers look to page 50 of the book, they’ll find the Bloomfield, which originated as one of the house drinks at Wren in Suttons Bay.”

In the book, Greene touts the Bloomfield as “a lovely variation on the Aviation” – itself a purple-hued cocktail that mixes dry gin, lemon juice, maraschino liqueur, and either Crème Yvette or crème de violette – that Wren’s front-of-house manager and bar manager Hanna Shomin invented in 2020. Shomin’s version trades out the lemon juice for lime and adds fresh grapefruit juice and honey syrup, but the secret ingredient is a more exotic additive.

“It’s a beautiful drink to look at and a delicious drink to sip, and it was fun to put in there, because my wife and I love going to Wren,” Greene tells the Leelanau Ticker. “Next time my wife and I are up in northern Michigan, we’ll have to pop in at Wren and give her a copy of the book.”

Greene and his wife still spend most of their time in Washington, D.C., where Greene works at the Pentagon as the trademark counsel for the United States Marine Corps. But ever since Greene’s daughter attended Interlochen, the family has been enchanted with northern Michigan – particularly Leelanau County, and especially the village of Northport. After spending many summers in the area, the Greenes bought property and built a house there, where they plan to retire in the not-too-distant future.

Last year, during his usual summer stint in the area, Greene struck up a summer bartending residency at Yard & Lake, where he themed drink menus around his past cocktail books. Sours is the author’s fifth cocktail compendium, after To Have and Have Another: A Hemingway Cocktail Companion (2012), The Manhattan: The Story of the First Modern Cocktail (2016), A Drinkable Feast: A Cocktail Companion to 1920s Paris (2018), and Cheers! Cocktails & Toasts to Celebrate Every Day of the Year (2022).

Beyond Wren, one other Leelanau establishment gets namechecked in Sours: Northport’s Fingers Crossed, which Detroit restaurateur Dave Kwiatkowski opened in 2023. Kwiatkowski’s name appears in a section about the “Last Word,” a cocktail that combines one ounce apiece of London dry gin, green Chartreuse, fresh lime juice, and maraschino liqueur. Greene writes that Kwiatkowski created a variation of the Last Word at his Detroit establishment, the Sugar House, in 2015, dubbing it Famous Last Words. That version of the drink includes equal parts Laphroaig single-malt Scotch, Bonal herbal liqueur, Aperol, and lemon juice.

“Perhaps, if you’re way up in Northport, Michigan, he’ll make you one at his new place, Fingers Crossed,” Greene writes of Kwiatkowski.

Many recipes included in Sours offer recipe variants like the Famous Last Words as alternate ways for readers to make and enjoy drinks. For Greene, it was that variable aspect of sours that made writing the book both and fun and challenging – and that he hopes home mixologists will use as inspiration to dream up their own original cocktails.

“The sour is just this classic trinity of something sweet, something sour, and something strong, and you can trace that all the way back to the 1600s,” Greene says. “Because of that formula, it’s rare when you know who exactly invented a drink, and when and where it happened. Take the cosmopolitan: There’s a bartender in Miami, who I know, who says she invented it. There’s also a bartender in New York, who I also know, who says he perfected it from a bartender in San Francisco. It’s nuts, and it made researching this book a real journey. But it also means that, if you know the sour cocktail formula, you can invent your own drinks. You don’t have to be a professional bartender.”