Philip Greene discussed his new book To Have and Have Another: A Hemingway Cocktail Companion in a presentation at the Washington Club last night that included an open bar and hors d'oeuvres. Greene, a scion of New Orleans' Peychaud family and a founder of the Museum of the American Cocktail there, has chronicled the various drinks in Hemingway's life and works. His engaging book devotes a chapter each to the 55 cocktails he tracked down (and one other chapter on a good way to drink cognac).
It seems to me to be a fairly easy challenge to have one or two of these cocktails each week for the next year. Few of them are new to me, but some are. This version of a gin & tonic is different, but actually quite pleasant -- it's the drink I got at the open bar last night. Hemingway seemed fairly fond of bitters in general (and Greene of course is not going to leave this out).
The two dashes of bitters rounds out the flavor of the drink. Bitters are a bit old-fashioned, of course, and the authentic Hemingway version with Gordon's gin and Schweppes tonic water may seem dated in this age of craft gins and homemade tonic, but it's hard to beat a classic. While I always think of gin & tonic as a hot weather drink and usually have it only in the summer, the addition of bitters helps make it palatable in cold weather as well.
Greene quotes liberally from Hemingway's work and the chapter on this drink features Islands in the Stream and the short story "The Denunciation," neither of which I've read. It would truly be a challenge to read the works cited each week but I won't commit to that.
It was quite a surprise when Greene said in answer to a question that his research had not taken him to Paris, which was a very long chapter in Hemingway's drinking life. You can't escape the writer if you go out drinking in Paris. I once met a prospective employer in the Hemingway Bar at the Hotel Ritz on Place Vendome. Harry's Bar, Closerie des Lilas, the Dome all have their memories of Hemingway.
During my own brief flirtation with bartending a few years ago (bartending school, two bartending gigs), I began a card file of drinks mentioned in literature just for the fun of it. I didn't get very far, but Greene's book appealed to me immediately for that reason. It turns out that Greene, who is an attorney at the Pentagon, is actually a neighbor here in Chevy Chase, and occasionally does guest bartending gigs in local venues, so chances are good I will run into him again as I count down the Hemingway cocktails.
Update: Perhaps reading the short stories is not too big a commitment. I found my Complete Short Stories and put it in a handy place. "The Denunciation" is pretty much as Greene described it. What struck me was how well Hemingway conjured up the bar, not only in its physical detail but in the esprit that inhabited it. As Greene says: "Here's hoping you've known a place like Chicote's in your life." It is a bit of a "Cheers" phenomenon -- you feel comfortable, everybody knows your name. The closest I've come, I suppose, is the Cafe de l'Esperance, my neighborhood cafe in Paris, but it was more of a cafe really than a bar. In terms of bonding with the proprietors and their longtime waitress, however, it had something of the same meaning for me.
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El Floridita in Old Havana has a long retro red and black bar, at the far end of which is a permanent guest in the form of a bronze sculpture of Hemingway leaning against it, waiting to order one of his 55 favorite cocktails. Hope we can join him there and raise a glass one day.
One day soon!
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