“I drink to make oth­er peo­ple more inter­est­ing.” ‑Ernest Hem­ing­way

A high school grad­u­ate, Hem­ing­way fur­thered his edu­ca­tion by his world trav­els, Key West to Kil­i­man­jaro, Venice to Paris.  For a real taste of local life, he said, “Don’t both­er with church­es, gov­ern­ment build­ings or city squares, if you want to know about a cul­ture, spend a night in its bars.”  The man is leg­endary for his unfet­tered appre­ci­a­tion of a good drink. He fre­quent­ly would weave cock­tails into the vivid descrip­tions of his books. Philip Greene, cock­tail and Hem­ing­way schol­ar, not­ed:

In The Sun Also Ris­es, Jake Barnes has a Jack Rose while wait­ing in vain for Brett. In A Farewell to Arms, Fred­er­ic Hen­ry has a cou­ple of “cool and clean” Mar­ti­nis; they made him “feel civ­i­lized.” And in For Whom the Bell Tolls, it is the rit­u­al of dripped absinthe that gives Robert Jor­dan’s tem­po­rary solace from the rig­ors of war: “One cup of it took the place of the evening papers, of all the old evenings in cafés, of all chest­nut trees that would be in bloom now in this month.… of all the things he had enjoyed and for­got­ten and that came back to him when he tast­ed that opaque, bit­ter, tongue-numb­ing, brain-warm­ing, stom­ach-warm­ing, idea-chang­ing liq­uid alche­my.”

In a word, this is my kind of writer.

In the moments he took a break from writ­ing, Hem­ing­way whiled away much of the 30s and 40s sit­ting at the bar of the famous Cuban haunt El Floridi­ta, where they fixed his pre­ferred drink, El Papa Doble, one after anoth­er. The Doble is a large drink, and Hem­ing­way was quick to brag that he could put back quite a few. And by a few.. I mean many. Hem­ing­way is famous­ly known to have con­sumed six of his name­sake Daiquiris on the aver­age after­noon, but as many as twelve Papa Dobles in one sit­ting when he was real­ly look­ing to let loose. A Papa Doble was com­pound­ed of two and a half jig­gers [or 3 3/4 ounces] of Bac­ar­di White Label Rum, the juice of two limes and half a grape­fruit, and six drops of maraschi­no, all placed in an elec­tric mix­er over shaved ice, whirled vig­or­ous­ly and served foam­ing in large gob­lets. Hem­ing­way said these drinks “had no taste of alco­hol and felt, as you drank them, the way down­hill glac­i­er ski­ing feels run­ning through pow­der snow.”

The Hem­ing­way Daiquiri is made with less rum than the Doble above, and though both were served to Hem­ing­way as frosty, crushed or shaved ice con­coc­tions, my ver­sion is the more mod­ern take, served up.

Recipe

• 2 oz white rum (Havana Club if you got it)
• 3/4 oz fresh grape­fruit juice
• 1/2 oz fresh lime juice
• 1/4 oz Luxar­do Maraschi­no Liqueur
• 1/4 oz sim­ple syrup 1:1
• Gar­nish with a grape­fruit twist

Shake all ingre­di­ents except the gar­nish and strain into a chilled cock­tail glass. Gar­nish with a grape­fruit twist.