The following are excerpts from Philip Greene’s To Have and Have Another – A Hemingway Cocktail Companion. We’ve made each (well, almost) cocktail in the book and selected 6 of our favourites. If you want to feel inspired, any one of these recipes is enough to put some hair on your chest. Few had livers as robust as Hemingway, so be careful, drink sensibly, and of course we recommend taking Sobur — especially after combining absinthe and Champagne.
Bailey
1 1/2 oz gin
1/2 oz. grapefruit juice
1/2 oz. fresh lime juice
1tsp. simple syrup (optional)
1 sprig mint
“The mint should be put in the shaker firsst. It should be torn up by hand as it steeps better. The gin should be added then and allowed to stand for a minute or two. Then add the grapefruit juice and then the lime juice. Stir vigorously with ice and do not allow to dilute too much, but serve very cold, with a sprig of mint in each glass.”
Serve in a chilled cocktail glass or wineglass.
Daiquiri (Papa Double, or the Wild Daiquiri, circa 1947)
3 3/4 oz. white rum
2oz fresh lime juice
2 oz. fresh grapefruit juice
6 drops maraschino liqueur
Blend well with ice. Serve in a large chilled goblet.
Death in the Afternoon (A Hemingway creation)
1 1/2 oz. absinthe
4oz. Champagne
Pour one jigger of absinthe into a champagne glass. Add iced champagne until it attains the proper opalescent milkiness.
Josie Russell (after his friend Joe)
4 1/2 oz. rum
12 oz. hard apple cider
2 oz. fresh lime juice
2 tsp. sugar
Fill a pitcher with ice, add all ingredients, stir well. Serve on ice in collins or highball glasses, garnished with lime wedge or peel. Serves two to three.
Martini (Hemingway style)
From a letter Heminway wrote in 1949, use “[j]ust enough vermouth to cover the bottom of the glass, 3/4 ounce of gin, and the spanish cocktail onions very crisp and also 15 degrees below zero when they go in the glass”
1 3/4 oz. London dry gin (Hemingway preferred 94-proof Gordon’s)
1/8 oz. French (dry) vermouth (Noilly Prat)
Stir well in a mixing glass with plenty of ice; strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a couple of frozen Spanish cocktail onions or a chilled garlic onion. Hemingway sometimes garnished his Martini with thinly sliced onion.
Mojito
2 oz. white rum
Juice of 1 lime
1 tsp. sugar (or 3/4 oz. simple syrup)
1-2 oz. seltzer
5 mint leaves
Shake all ingredients (except for seltzer) well with ice, strain into an ice-filled collins glass, then pour seltzer into shaker to rinse ice (and chill seltzer) and strain into glass. Stir; garnish with mint sprig.
