Not every revolution requires an insurrection, and not every renaissance begins in salons, galleries or cloistered chambers. The cocktail seemed an unlikely candidate to start either a revolution or a renaissance, but somehow over the past decade, it has managed to become the center of both. Today the cocktail is celebrated at week-long conferences and festivals that draw thousands. Taking cues from a wider culinary movement that s been building steam for decades, craft-cocktail bars (and the bartenders and writers who inhabit them) are digging in the depths of the drink s rich history and...