The second cocktail this #FridayNightCocktails is the Death in the Afternoon, also called the Hemingway Champagne/ or simply the Hemingway, is a cocktail made up of absinthe and Champagne, invented by Ernest Hemingway, the famed American novelist.
The cocktail shares a name with Hemingway’s 1932 book Death in the Afternoon, and the recipe was published in So Red the Nose, or Breath in the Afternoon, a 1935 cocktail book with contributions from famous authors. Hemingway’s original instructions were:
“Pour one jigger absinthe into a Champagne glass. Add iced Champagne until it attains the proper opalescent milkiness. Drink three to five of these slowly.”
It is claimed that the cocktail was invented by Hemingway after he spent time in the Left Bank, Paris, and enjoyed the absinthe there. The original printed recipe for the drink claimed that it was invented “by the author and three officers of H.M.S. Danae after having spent seven hours overboard trying to get Capt. Bra Saunders’ fishing boat off a bank where she had gone with us in a N.W. gale.” Death in the Afternoon is known for both its decadence and its high strength.
