Hangover cures #1 – Death in the Afternoon (Ernest Hemingway)

 

Ingredients: 
Absinthe – 1 jigger
Champagne – Freepour

God Christ was Ernest Hemingway manly. I once adopted the man's method of dealing with sunburn, which was to douse yourself liberally in vinegar – he didn’t specify which kind, so I went for malt – and have a bath that’s one degree away from turning you into a bisque. Suffice it to say that after that, I was so red that the sunburn was a moot point.

Anyway, it’s well documented that Ernesto liked a drink – and as what goes up must come down, he was subsequently well-placed to educate us in the way of hangover cures. Hemingway called his Death in the Afternoon, naming it after his own book on bullfighting – one of only three sports, claimed he, along with motor racing and mountain climbing. Discuss. Or don’t.

READ MORE: HANGOVER CURES #2 – D.R. HENDERSON (FERGUS HENDERSON)

The recipe is disarmingly simple, yet devastatingly, er, devastating. “Pour one jigger [44.4ml] absinthe into a champagne glass. Add iced champagne until it attains the proper opalescent milkiness. Drink three to five of these slowly.”

Image: The Cocktail Journey

This was Hemingway’s contribution to the 1935 cocktail book So Red the Nose, or – Breath in the Afternoon, and as Hemingway himself explained: “This was arrived at 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.” Could never just have a simple drink, could he?

Unless in writing this blog my views change dramatically, I will maintain over these pages that I am a strong believer in getting back on the sauce after a night out – and more so, that you should not pussyfoot around it, but plunge your witless, confused body back with a hammer blow into a fairly moderate state of intoxication.

Three to five of these, one feels, would do the trick.

As a post-script, if we’re talking brands of absinthe, I had the pleasure of tasting Marilyn Manson’s Mansinthe a few years ago. I know, I know, celebrity endorsements, cancel culture etc. etc. – but its success, one feels, was probably more down to the collaboration with the award-winning Matter-Luginbühl AG distillery and absinthe expert Markus Lion rather than the input of old Brian. I have to say, it was very good, and would be my go-to.