Death in the Afternoon
3.8 113 ratings
Ingredients
How to make
Serve in a flute glass
Prepare
- 1 Select a FLUTE GLASS.
- 2 Prepare garnish of lemon zest twist and rose petal.
Method
- 3 POUR first 2 ingredients into chilled glass and briefly stir.
- 4 TOP with sparkling wine.
Garnish
- 5 Express lime zest twist over cocktail and discard.
- 6 Float rose petal.
Flavour profile
12.1% alc./vol. · 1.3 standard drinks · 144 calories
History
Absinthe dominates this drink, alongside hints of biscuity champagne. Sugar is added to tame this cocktail.
Ernest Hemingway created this drink, which was not merely named after his book. It appeared in the 1935 cocktail book So Red the Nose, or Breath in the Afternoon. The maestro's original recipe has been slightly modified, as it originally contained an impressive ounce-and-a-half of absinthe. The book's instructions are: "Pour 1 jigger of absinthe into a champagne glass, add iced champagne until it attains the proper opalescent milkiness. Drink 3 to 5 of these slowly." Following this is a note from Hemingway regarding the drink's origin: "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." The compilers of the book added: "It takes a man with hair on his chest to drink five Absinths and Champagne Cocktails and still handle the English language in the Hemingway fashion. But Ernest has proved his valour, not alone in his cups. Captain of the swimming team at Oak Park high school - first American to be wounded on the Italian front during the World War (with 227 individual wounds to his credit) - tossed by a bull in the streets of Pamplona while rescuing his friend Donald Ogden Stewart - deep sea fisherman - big game hunter - and one of the first citizens of Key West - Hemingway is the man who can hold his Absinthe like a postwar novelist."
Created by Ernest Hemingway