Gary Regan, from English pubs to Manhattan bars and the cocktail page.

Regans’ Orange Bitters No. 6 carries the name of Gary Regan, known in the bar trade as “Gaz,” a British-born bartender who became one of the best-known drinks writers in the United States. English Wikipedia says he grew up working in his parents’ pubs in England, trained as a chef in Blackpool and emigrated to New York in 1973, where he tended bar on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and later managed the North Star Pub at South Street Seaport.

After more than two decades behind the bar he turned to writing. English Wikipedia, citing StarChefs, says he began by writing about bars for the trade magazine Food Arts, and he went on to columns for Wine Enthusiast, Food & Wine and the San Francisco Chronicle, where, the Australian trade magazine Australian Bartender noted in 2019, his “Cocktailian” columns ran in the 2000s. His first book, The Bartender’s Bible, written with his then wife Mardee Haidin Regan, appeared in 1993, according to Imbibe’s obituary by Paul Clarke as cited by English Wikipedia.

The book he is best remembered for is The Joy of Mixology, published in 2003, which Australian Bartender credits with coining the term “cocktalian” for a particular kind of bartender. Later titles included books on the Negroni and on gin, and the annual series 101 Best New Cocktails and Annual Manual for Bartenders. He also wrote on whiskey, with The Book of Bourbon and Other Fine American Whiskeys in 1995, English Wikipedia says.

Regan died in November 2019; Australian Bartender reported on 18 November 2019 that his death had been announced by his wife, and The New York Times published an obituary by Sam Roberts on 3 December 2019, English Wikipedia records. The bitters still carry his name.

A hard-to-find ingredient, a recipe from Charles H. Baker Jr. and a deal with Sazerac.

The bitters began as a bartender’s private fix. In February 2018 the drinks writer Robert Simonson, writing for Punch, described how Regan wanted an orange bitters that suited his own palate at a time when the ingredient was hard to find, and began making batches himself. His starting point was a recipe in Charles H. Baker Jr.’s The Gentleman’s Companion. Simonson wrote that Regan’s homemade bitters were passed from bar to bar for years, and that Dale DeGroff used an early version at the Rainbow Room in New York.

In 2005 Regan reached an agreement with the Sazerac Company of New Orleans to sell the bitters commercially, Punch reported. Sazerac regarded it as a risk, Simonson wrote, since its main bitters brand at the time was Peychaud’s, and Sazerac’s Jana Ritter told him the arrangement was about bringing in an expert in an area where the company did not have one.

The “No. 6” in the name is generally explained as a count of attempts. Difford’s Guide says it refers to the number of prototype recipes Regan went through before reaching the final formula. The same guide lists the bitters at 45 per cent alcohol by volume.

Cocktail bars took it up quickly, according to Punch, which also reported that bartenders often mix it with the orange bitters of Fee Brothers to balance its pronounced cardamom note — a pairing common enough to have earned its own nickname, “Feegans.”

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all cocktail-bitters names: Peychaud’s, Fee Brothers, Regans’, Bittermens, Scrappy’s, The Bitter Truth and Bob’s Bitters. Cocktail bitters are concentrated flavourings, usually made by steeping herbs, spices, roots, peels or other ingredients in alcohol, and they are used a few dashes or drops at a time to season a drink rather than as a drink in their own right.

That small dose shapes how a bitters brand looks. The product is sold in a small bottle, often fitted with a dasher top or a dropper, so the label has to carry a name, a flavour and a maker in very little space, and the same bottle may sit on a bar back, a shop shelf or a kitchen counter. The brands here range from names with long histories to small makers started in this century, and some now belong to much larger drinks companies while others are still run by the people who founded them.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — who founded the brand and when, who owns it now, where its bitters are made and how its labels and packaging have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A writer’s name on a Sazerac bottle.

Regans’ Orange Bitters No. 6 is a Sazerac Company product. English Wikipedia describes the bitters as developed by Regan and made by Sazerac, the New Orleans drinks company whose bitters business dates to the 1930s, when, The Spirits Business reported in 2017, it launched Peychaud’s Bitters; the same report said Peychaud’s is now made at the company’s Buffalo Trace Distillery in Kentucky. Sazerac’s Jana Ritter told Punch in 2018 that sales of Regans’ continued to grow.

The spelling matters. The brand writes its name with the apostrophe after the s — Regans’ — while many retailers and articles print it as “Regan’s,” and some shop listings shorten it to Sazerac Orange Bitters.

Sazerac’s bitters shelf has grown since the 2005 deal. In March 2017 the company bought a strategic interest in Bittermens, the craft bitters maker founded by Avery and Janet Glasser, The Spirits Business reported, so the same company now sells Peychaud’s, Regans’ and Bittermens.

Regan kept writing alongside the bitters. English Wikipedia lists the bartender’s GIN compendium in 2012, The Negroni: A Gaz Regan Notion in 2013, The Negroni: Drinking to La Dolce Vita in 2015 and a revised and updated edition of The Joy of Mixology in 2017; Class, the British bar magazine, remembered him in its tribute for that book and for his finger-stirred Negroni.

For a design guide, Regans’ shows how a personal name and a number can carry a product — a signature, an apostrophe and “No. 6” doing the work that a crest or a founding date does for older bitters. Compare Angostura, the 1824 bitters with the oversized label, and Peychaud’s, its stablemate at Sazerac. For this guide we use Seville orange, burnt peel and bar-book cream with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Regans’ Orange Bitters No. 6’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.