I have long been enamoured with the Hemingway daiquiri. There are various reasons why. The first is because it was an education.
Years ago, I used to tutor English to Italian youngsters in Oxford for £20 an hour. After a three-hour stint on a Friday, I would take my £60 and walk over the road to Raoul’s, an excellent cocktail bar overseen back then by a mixologist called Alex Proudfoot, who is now in Manchester.
I’ve never liked sugar in cocktails, even as a teenager, and, after repeat visits wherein I would request something “not sweet, strong, enlivening” – having long exhausted good options on the regular menu – Alex asked me one late afternoon: “Have you ever had a Hemingway?”
I hadn’t. So he made me one. It was a transcending experience.
Here was a drink without syrup, sweetened only by the cherry liqueur Maraschino, pumped hard and fast by rum and freshened by grapefruit, tempered by lime. I’ll never forget the first time a Hemingway touched my lips. It brought me home. The optimum number is five.
It is a strong drink, the Hemingway, and ever since that soft afternoon it has been my firm favourite any time before 11pm, after which I’m more attuned to the possibilities presented by a Manhattan – bourbon, perfect, on the rocks and with a cherry – or the hours between 6 and 8pm during which I quite often favour a Negroni because of its efficiency and ease.
Another thing I like about the cocktail is its supposed origin story. So it goes that it came about in 1930s Cuba after the author Ernest Hemingway strolled into a bar called La Floridita to find regular daiquiris being made, one of which he tried, enjoyed, but proclaimed to be too sweet. “That’s good, but I prefer mine with twice the rum and no sugar,” he apparently said.
And so came a drink named the Papa Doble – Hemingway was known as “Papa” in the drinking dens of Havana – which contained four times the rum and twice the lime juice. I’ve never had one, nor do I want to, as it sounds imbalanced and reckless.
The bartender was rightly not content with the author’s request. Constantino Ribalaigua Vert moved things on and soon added the grapefruit and the maraschino and the Hemingway we know today came to be.
What I find odd is how it remains a little niche. Even at trailblazing places like the Cold Room in Montreal or Mahaniyom in Bangkok, it isn’t listed on menus. In classics sections there will always be martinis, Negronis, Old Fashioneds and margaritas but hardly ever Hemingways.
Any bartender worth his salt will know how to make one – in Europe, top marks for those at Fidelity in Dublin, Clumsies in Athens, Dr Stravinsky in Barcelona and Bar Bukowski in Amsterdam. In London, Scarfes bar makes the best, at least when the Italian bartender with the curly moustache is in situ.
There might be romance to its obscurity. The Hemingway brings about an instant rapport when ordered, maybe because it isn’t boring; perhaps it would become boring were it to feature more readily. But then there are also countless occasions where I’ve asked for one – parched and yearning – and it hasn’t been possible. “No grapefruit juice, sorry”.
There have been decent bartenders in proficient locations who didn’t know the Hemingway. Some try to Google it, but that never works because making one requires guile even if it sounds simple.
I’m writing about Hemingways now because I think the cocktail’s time is coming, just as we march towards the 2030s and its centenary looms. But also because London’s hottest new opening, One Club Row in Bethnal Green, has listed the drink on its menu. I was surprised and excited to see it.
Until now, it’s only been on permanently at the Green Bar at Hotel Cafe Royal in London, maybe a couple of others. Naturally, you can get it at Bar Hemingway at the Ritz Paris, so too Nonna Doria’s in New York (not the best, but credible). I remember having one somewhere in Milan, but cannot remember where. Likewise, Berlin – but I can’t remember anything in Berlin for obvious reasons.
Do not think it arriving on one menu to be a stretch. One Club Row is a place where every food and drink fan is going to pitch up, believe me, and rum-soaked waves will swell.
