Were he to have opted out of suicide and find oneself some sorting of fountain of youth , today , July 21 , would have been legendary writer and fecund drinker Ernest Hemingway ’s 177th birthday . Around the human race , his devotees and disciples will shake upHemingway Daiquirisin his award . But , were he alert and were you to make Hemingway a birthday cocktail using our recipe , Hemingway would have reverse his nozzle up at the drinking that put up his name .
According to legend ( and the bookAnd a Bottle of Rumby Wayne Curtis ) , theHemingwayDaiquiri was invent when , one fateful daytime , Hemingway step into El Floridita in Havana , Cuba , to use the restroom . Upon emerging , Hemingway catch batch of a card of wintry Daiquiris on the bar . He require if he could try one , and the bartender , smartly , say yes ( Hemingway was a large , burly gentleman’s gentleman , not to be refused ) . Hemingway ’s verdict : “ That ’s good , but I opt it without the sugar and doublerum . ” The bartender mixed one up to his specifications on the spot and Hemingway loved it . It was named the Papa Doble — a nod to Hemingway ’s pet name amongst Havana locals — but Hemingway referred to it as a Double Frozen Daiquiri .
This was the drink he slurped down by the dozens — literally . He once fuddle 17 in one day , and accord to a alphabetic character Hemingway write to writer Harvey Breit , he did n’t even get a holdover . In the correspondence , Hemingway imply that the cocktail ’s sugar - spare formulation and a steak sandwich were to thank .
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If booze 17 of one kind of drink in one day is n’t enough to convince you of Hemingway ’s love for the Double Frozen Daiquiri , you simply have to pick upIslands in the Stream , his posthumously published novel in which the protagonist , the Hemingway - esque Thomas Hudson , drinks almost as many Daiquiris as Hemingway himself . In the novel , Hemingway writes , “ This quick-frozen Daiquiri , so well beat as it is , looks like the sea where the moving ridge falls away from the fore of the ship when she is doing thirty knot . ” He become on to write that it had “ no taste of alcohol and feel , as you drank them , the style downhill glacier skiing feels run through powder snow and , after the sixth and 8th , felt like downhill glacier skiing feels when you are hightail it unroped . ” If that ’s not love , we do n’t want to hump what have a go at it it .
So Hemingway , it can safely be said , was a bounteous buff of the Papa Doble . But that was n’t a Hemingway Daiquiri — it was an special - boozy , extra - ironical version of El Floridita ’s house Daiquiri . The Hemingway Daiquiri today more tight resembles the E. Henmiway Special ( the spelling error is shank , per Philip Greene , who quote a 1937 version of El Floridita ’s cocktail manual in his playscript , To Have and Have Another ) , which was made with just two ounces of white rummy ( as react to the Papa Doble ’s intimately four Panthera uncia ) , grapefruit juice and maraschino liqueur . Papa would n’t have liquidate his time on something so small on rum .
But at least the E. Henmiway Special followed Hemingway ’s no sugar rule . forward-looking daytime Hemingway Daiquiris are made with at least a quarter ounce of simple syrup — if not more . And Hemingway just manifestly did n’t like sugary drinks . Even before he was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes , Hemingway was anti - sweet .
InThe Good Life According to Ernest Hemingway , A.E. Hotchner , who traveled with Hemingway , recalls that he once explicate that he did n’t wish going to other the great unwashed ’s houses because he could n’t trust the food or drink . “ The last time I accepted a dinner invitation was about a year ago , ” Hemingway told Hotchner . “ They dish out sweet Champagne , which I had to drink to be polite , and it took ten day for me to get it out of my system . ”
So , today , drink a Daiquiri like Hemingway would have wanted — with double the rum and no sugar . Or , prefer for his lawful drink of choice , a Whiskey & Soda .
