How To Drink Like Ernest Hemingway, Ian Fleming, And Other Literary Greats

Philip Greene, author of To Have and Have Another: A Hemingway Cocktail Companion, offers a piece at the Daily Beast on Ernest Hemingway and Ian Fleming, two writers who drank and wrote about Campari and other drinks.  

 European watering holes have been seducing writers for decades. A long afternoon spent writing (or supposedly writing) at a sidewalk café, usually accompanied by an apéritif, has a certain allure and draw. Ernest Hemingway wrote of his “good café” and extolled the virtues of “a clean, well-lighted place.” Malcolm Cowley pined for those days on the café terrace, “with a good long drink and nothing to do but drink it.”

And often, from the research I’ve done for my books, those writers enjoyed the bitter apéritif Campari and, naturally, included it in their novels, memoirs and poems.

The liqueur was invented by Gaspare Campari in the 1860s at the Bass Bar in Turin, Italy, where he worked as a maitre licoriste, or master bartender. Campari is a secret blend of natural ingredients, mostly herbs, spices, bark, fruits and fruit peels. Its distinctive carmine hue originally derived from dye extracted from the cochineal, a beetle-like insect native to Latin America.

… Coincidentally, it was in Milan where Ernest Hemingway discovered Campari, just two years after Lawrence released Twilight. At age 18, Hemingway served in the International Red Cross Ambulance Corps, and was severely wounded during an Austrian mortar attack on the Italian lines near Venice. Evacuated to a hospital in Milan, he spent the summer and fall of 1918 recovering from 227 shrapnel and bullet wounds to his legs. Friends would bring him wine and spirits to help him deal with his pain (and boredom). As he recalled in his memoir A Moveable Feast, one of these friends was an “old man with beautiful manners and a great name who came to the hospital in Italy and brought me a bottle of Marsala or Campari and behaved perfectly, and then one day I would have to tell the nurse never to let that man into the room again.” When he later recounted this tale to Gertrude Stein, she brusquely replied, “those people are sick and cannot help themselves and you should pity them.” Hmmm, but the old guy did have good taste in booze, no?

…Another famous novelist and imbiber, Ian Fleming, was also a Campari fan. In fact, the first drink ever enjoyed by his signature character, James Bond, who is, of course, known for ordering a Vesper and his “shaken, not stirred” Martini, was actually the Americano. It makes an appearance in Fleming’s first Bond novel, Casino Royale, published in 1953:

“Bond ordered an Americano and examined the sprinkling of overdressed customers, mostly from Paris he guessed, who sat talking with focus and vivacity, creating that theatrically clubbable atmosphere of l’heure de l’apéritif. The men were drinking inexhaustible quarter-bottles of Champagne, the women Dry Martinis.”

Speaking of Paris, Fleming reveals his disdain for the City of Light’s cocktail scene in his 1960 short story “From a View to a Kill.”

“James Bond had his first drink of the evening at Fouquet’s. It was not a solid drink. One cannot drink seriously in French cafés…No, in cafés you have to drink the least offensive of the musical comedy drinks that go with them, and Bond always had the same thing—an Americano—Bitter Campari, Cinzano, a large slice of lemon peel and soda. For the soda he always specified Perrier, for in his opinion expensive soda water was the cheapest way to improve a poor drink.”

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-to-drink-like-ernest-hemingway-ian-fleming-and-other-literary-greats?source=articles&via=rss 

A Look Back At How Hemingway Taught The World To Drink On The Great Writer's Birthday

Philip Greene, author of To Have and Have Another: A Hemingway Cocktail Companion, offers a piece at the Daily Beast on how Hemingway taught the world to drink.

Like that old poem about the six blind men, each perceiving an elephant in vastly different ways (a snake! a wall! a spear!), so it is when it comes to people’s perspectives on Ernest Hemingway.

Indeed, he taught the world to write; his distinctive use of short, declarative sentences influenced many generations of young writers. He taught the world to hunt and fish: From trout streams up in Michigan to trophy marlin and tuna in the Caribbean to big game on the African veldt, his vivid depictions of these experiences inspired many to wet a hook or shoulder a rifle. He brought the drama and tragedy of bullfighting to the world and prompted many to journey to Pamplona to run with the beasts.

His love of travel motivated many more to follow in his footsteps. Ventures in Chicago, Michigan, the Great American West, Italy, France, Bimini, Cuba, China and, of course, Africa informed his writings with exploits worthy of any Lonely Planet guide.

And, of course, he taught the world to drink.

I am speaking of quality, mind you, not quantity. Hemingway, who would have turned 117 today, was no stranger to excess, and I routinely caution that while one should experience the wide array of drinks he brought to us, it should be done in moderation. That said, if you want to try to break the house record he set at the Floridita in Havana in 1942—17 double frozen Daiquiris downed in one sitting—be my guest!

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/21/how-ernest-hemingway-taught-the-world-to-drink.html

You can also read an earlier post on Hemingway via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2016/07/happy-birthday-to-ernest-hemingway.html

To Have And Have Another: A Hemingway Cocktail Companion

Martin Morse Wooster at the Weekly Standard offers a review of Philip Greene's To Have and Have Another: A Hemingway Cocktail Companion.

Ernest Hemingway drank far more than most people, and probably more than was good for him. He loved liquor so much that when he was in his late 50s, and a diabetic, his doctors tried to ration his alcohol consumption—to a liter of wine a day.

But Hemingway was far from being an uncontrollable drunk. He did most of his writing in the mornings, and he made sure not to drink while he was writing. Nor did he drink late at night.

 

Moreover, Hemingway well understood the problems that uncontrolled alcohol consumption could cause for a writer’s career: Reminiscing about F. Scott Fitzgerald, who often was barely able to control his drinking, Hemingway recalled, “I told Scott that being a rummy made him very vulnerable—I mean, a rummy married to a crazy is not the kind of pari-mutuel that aids a writer.” 
 

Drinking was an essential part of Hemingway’s character and of his fiction.

 

Here, Philip Greene provides a highly entertaining look at what Hemingway drank, where he drank, and the characters Hemingway encountered while drinking.   

 

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

 

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/moveable-thirst_784263.html?page=1 

A Guide To Drinking With Hemingway

Jason Wilson at the Washington Post offers a piece on a new book about author Ernest Hemingway and the drinking in his novels and short stories.

For the better part of a century, a certain type of young person has learned to drink from the pages of Ernest Hemingway. I should know. I’ll sheepishly admit that I was once that certain type of young person.

 

“The Sun Also Rises” might do more to spark an interest in spirits and cocktails (and wine) in people like me than does an entire library of mixologists’ guides. Look back through my Spirits columns and recipes, and you’ll find Hemingway’s fingerprints are all over them, including the Negroni, the daiquiri and the Jack Rose.

Philip Greene, the Washington-based author of the new book “To Have and Have Another: A Hemingway Cocktail Companion” (Perigee), is a kindred spirit.
 

“Hemingway introduced me to Campari. He introduced me to Valpolicella wine. In the 1980s, I was reading ‘Islands in the Stream’ while visiting my in-laws in Florida and decided to make Green Isaac’s Special — with gin, coconut water, lime juice and bitters,” Greene says. “The first time I had it, I thought, ‘This is cool. I’m drinking what Hemingway drank.’ ”

Whatever one feels about the literary legacy of Hemingway, one thing is indisputable: The man was detailed and exacting in which drinks his characters imbibe, and the choice of drink is always important.

“We watched the beginning of the evening of the last night of the fiesta. The absinthe made everything seem better. I drank it without sugar in the dripping glass, and it was pleasantly bitter.” So says narrator Jake Barnes in the waning pages of “The Sun Also Rises.”

At this point in the novel, Jake’s friends have beaten the hell out of each other, and the girl has run away with the bullfighter. Jake’s decision to drink absinthe “without sugar in the dripping glass” is no small thing.

... “People ask me, ‘Could you do this with another author?’ I don’t think so. Maybe Ian Fleming or Raymond Chandler, but no one else,” Greene says.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/hemingway-and-me-at-the-bar/2012/11/05/fa3f3094-2381-11e2-ac85-e669876c6a24_story.html