For many of us, a cocktail is more than it’s constituent parts, carefully tempered by the hands and knowledge of a hoary barkeep.
Indeed there are drinks that reach across the continuum of time and space, providing a rosy tinted connection to an imagined perfect place.
While Ian Fleming’s shaken martini might have had the most significant impact on the wider drinking public, there is no author who so was both so prolific, or as detailed in his description as Ernest Hemingway.
The Daiquiri’s of La Floridita are well known, but only those who’ve spent days and nights with the Great Bear of a Man’s prose will have an appreciation for the range of beverages his characters were wont to consume and the obvious familiarity the author had for their production, flavours and intoxicating effects.
Which brings me to my point, a new addition to the shelves of intoxicologists everywhere, To Have and Have Another: A Hemingway Cocktail Companion by Philip Greene.
Mr Greene has an interesting day job as Trademark and Internet Counsel for the U.S Marine Corp stationed in a well known five-sided building in D.C.
Little wonder then, that he has been driven to drink, firstly as a founder of the Museum of the American Cocktail down in New Orleans and now as a published author.
The book is being met with rave reviews and grand acclaim, a thoroughly researched piece of prose and perhaps more so as a drinking experience as well.
You can grab a copy on the Amazon here.
Everyday Drinking 