Well, we made it. The end of 2020 is finally here.
A new year represents a chance to reset, refocus, and start afresh for many people in normal years, but the end of a year has never felt more necessary than right now. This year was one unlike any other and I’m sure most of us are glad to see it go, to have the beginning of a new year to hopefully mark a shift in the tide and lead us into brighter, happier times.
Just one year ago, when the new decade looked bright and shiny, much of the world seemed to collectively ring in the 2020s like it was 1920, like drinking was illegal and they’d all piled into some jazzy Manhattan speakeasy.
Though this decade has started off on a bad (terrible, horrific, unbelievably horrendous) foot, we must hope for the best in looking to the future. While saying goodbye to this wretched year cannot involve the raging, decadent parties we associate with the ’20s, we can certainly still celebrate its end and drink in style.
The Drink
The drink we’re making today is a famous 1920s cocktail named for an American author famous for not only his novels, but for his love of drink–Ernest Hemingway.
The Hemingway Daiquiri
The 1920s in America are characterized by the glamorized rule-breaking of organized crime and Prohibition-era drinking and partying, and for good reason. The ‘20s bring to mind iconic gangsters such as Al Capone, Dutch Schultz, and Lucky Luciano—some of the biggest names who capitalized on the restrictions of the Volstead Act with their bootlegging. A new age of music, dance, and glamour swept in, bringing flappers and cocktails to fill the speakeasies of the Jazz Age.
From Grasshoppers and the Bees Knees to Mint Juleps and Sidecars, the cocktails of the ’20s have lived on, giving us a rather fun connection to the past, not unlike the literature of that time.
Within the world of literature, a prolific author and drinker was Ernest Hemingway. Well known for his love of drink, Hemingway was experiencing life as an expat in Paris for much of the decade while the Roaring Twenties raged on in America, drinking around the cafés of Paris with F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Picasso, and other literary and cultural elites. While he lived in Paris from 1921 to 1928, he, as well as other literary greats of the time, was no stranger to the revelry of New York City’s speakeasies. A favorite of theirs that hosted the literary crowd was the Greenwich Village speakeasy Chumley’s. Opened in 1922, Chumley’s served the likes of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, E.E. Cummings, Steinbeck, and more. Owner Leland Chumley honored his literary customers by covering the speakeasy’s walls with their portraits and dust jackets, fostering a unique atmosphere among the speakeasies of the time. Chumley’s remained in operation until 2007 when the chimney in its dining room collapsed and they closed for renovations that had no shortage of red-tape difficulties. After a ten-year hiatus, the bar opened once again in 2016. Unfortunately, due to the difficulties of Covid-19, Chumley’s has had to close down permanently, a devastating loss to those who appreciate the rich history and cultural importance of such significant establishments.
Hemingway was known for preferring his drinks dry, strong, and very, very cold. In his time in Paris, NYC, and other travels, he was known to spend large amounts of his free time in bars, which he believed were the best place to soak up the culture of any given city. He developed favorite haunts around the world, bars and cafés he’d frequent whenever he was in town. At one such bar, El Floridita in Cuba, the Hemingway Daiquiri was born.
It’s said that Hemingway developed a love of daiquiris in Cuba, trying various versions of the drink mixed up by El Floridita’s well-known bartender Constantino Ribalaigua Vert. This recipe I’m sharing today was inspired by Hemingway and became known as the Hemingway Special at El Floridita. Widely known as the Hemingway Daiquiri now, this take on a daiquiri wasn’t even the exact drink Hemingway preferred. He liked his drinks with no sugar and very strong—nicknamed “Papa” in Cuba, Hemingway’s original concoction was called the “Papa Doble” (double)–four ounces of white rum with a splash of lime and shaken until it was cold enough that it couldn’t be tasted going down.
El Floridita had to tinker with the drink to be more palatable to the wider public, coming up with the Hemingway Daiquiri—a strong take on a daiquiri that substitutes maraschino liqueur for simple syrup to keep it from becoming as sugary sweet as other daiquiri recipes. The Hemingway Daiquiri was a hit and the rest, as they say, is history.
The Recipe
Makes one cocktail:
2 ounces of white rum
3/4 ounce of lime juice
1/2 ounce of maraschino liqueur
1/2 ounce of fresh grapefruit juice
If you’d prefer a little sweetness in your cocktail, feel free to add some simple syrup.
Directions
Simply add all the ingredients in a cocktail shaker full of ice and shake it up. Pour into glass, garnish with a wedge of lime, and enjoy!
Pairs Well With
The Ghosts of Eden Park
by Karen Abbott
In the early days of Prohibition, long before Al Capone became a household name, a German immigrant named George Remus quits practicing law and starts trafficking whiskey. Within two years he’s a multimillionaire. The press calls him “King of the Bootleggers,” writing breathless stories about the Gatsby-esque events he and his glamorous second wife, Imogene, host at their Cincinnati mansion, with party favors ranging from diamond jewelry for the men to brand new Pontiacs for the women. By the summer of 1921, Remus owns 35 percent of all the liquor in the United States. Pioneering prosecutor Mabel Walker Willebrandt is determined to bring him down. Willebrandt’s bosses at the U.S. Attorney’s office hired her right out of law school, assuming she’d pose no real threat to the cozy relationship they maintain with Remus. Eager to prove them wrong, she dispatches her best investigator, Franklin Dodge, to look into his empire. It’s a decision with deadly consequences: With Remus behind bars, Dodge and Imogene begin an affair and plot to ruin him, sparking a bitter feud that soon reaches the highest levels of government–and that can only end in murder.
Diviners Series
by Libba Bray
Add to Goodreads Diviners Series Review
SOMETHING DARK AND EVIL HAS AWAKENED… Evie O’Neill has been exiled from her boring old hometown and shipped off to the bustling streets of New York City—and she is pos-i-tute-ly ecstatic. It’s 1926, and New York is filled with speakeasies, Ziegfeld girls, and rakish pickpockets. The only catch is that she has to live with her uncle Will and his unhealthy obsession with the occult. Evie worries her uncle will discover her darkest secret: a supernatural power that has only brought her trouble so far. But when the police find a murdered girl branded with a cryptic symbol and Will is called to the scene, Evie realizes her gift could help catch a serial killer. As Evie jumps headlong into a dance with a murderer, other stories unfold in the city that never sleeps. A young man named Memphis is caught between two worlds. A chorus girl named Theta is running from her past. A student named Jericho is hiding a shocking secret. And unknown to all, something dark and evil has awakened…
Zelda
by Nancy Milford
Zelda Sayre began as a Southern beauty, became an international wonder, and died by fire in a madhouse. With her husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald, she moved in a golden aura of excitement, romance, and promise. The epitome of the Jazz Age, together they rode the crest of the era: to its collapse and their own.
From years of exhaustive research, Nancy Milford brings alive the tormented, elusive personality of Zelda and clarifies as never before her relationship with Scott Fitzgerald. Zelda traces the inner disintegration of a gifted, despairing woman, torn by the clash between her husband’s career and her own talent.
The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
by William J. Helmer and Arthur J. Bilek
During Prohibition, Chicago’s Beer Wars turned the city into a battleground, secured its reputation as gangster capital of the world, and laid the foundation for nationally organised crime. Bootlegger bloodshed was greater there than anywhere else. The machine-gun murders of seven men on the morning of February 14, 1929, by killers dressed as cops became the gangland crime of the century. Since then it has been featured in countless histories, biographies, movies, and television specials. The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, however, is the first book-length treatment of the subject. Unlike other accounts, it challenges the commonly held assumption that Al Capone decreed the slayings to gain supremacy in the Chicago underworld. The authors assert the deed was a case of bad timing and poor judgement by a secret crew from St. Louis known to Capone’s mostly Italian mob as the American boys.
Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin
by Marion Meade
In her exuberant new work, Marion Meade presents a portrait of four extraordinary writers – Dorothy Parker, Zelda Fitzgerald, Edna St.Vincent Millay, and Edna Ferber- whose loves, lives, and literary endeavors embodied the spirit of the 1920s. These literary heroines did what they wanted and said what they thought, living wholly in the moment. They kicked open the door for twentieth-century women writers and set a new model for every woman trying to juggle the serious issues of economic independence, political power, and sexual freedom. Here are the social and literary triumphs and inevitably the penances paid: crumbled love affairs, abortions, depression, lost beauty, nervous breakdowns, and finally, overdoses and even madness.
A vibrant mixture of literary scholarship, social history, and scandal, Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin is a rich evocation of a period that will forever intrigue and captivate us.
In choosing books to drink with this iconic 1920s Hemingway-inspired cocktail, I wanted to keep with the theme of 1920s for this New Year’s Eve. Whether you’re looking to learn about the gangsters or literary icons of the ‘20s or you’d like a fun, jazzy fictional story set in the ‘20s, these books are the place to go.
Final Thoughts
The Hemingway Daiquiri was quite nice. It was strong and crisp, but bright and refreshing. The rum was a bit strong for my taste; I can’t imagine drinking more than one terrible, burning sip of Hemingway’s Papa Doble. Yikes. This daiquiri, however, was close to delicious. A little less rum and I could see myself enjoying this more often.
Cheers to a (hopefully) much, much better year!
Happy New Year,
Madison