One Ugly Monkey

Sorry for the delay in reporting these results. I've dropped twenty pounds and am way out of drinking shape. Experiments didn't used to hurt this bad.

Moreover, Death in the Afternoon is not something to trifle with. A heady mix of absinthe and Champagne rumored to be favored by, if not actually invented by, Ernest Hemingway (who wrote a book with the same title and only spells his name with 1 "M"). The drink involves a jigger of absinthe, newly legalized, and enough iced Champagne to obtain "the proper opalescent milkiness."

Hemingway favored French. So we used a very good, if not exorbitantly priced, grower Champagne from the grand cru village of Verzenay. A non-vintage Michel Arnould & Fils Grand Cuvee Brut. For the absinthe, we opted for a hand-crafted elixir from Berkeley, California called St George. It may be less "traditional" but it has dense herbal aromatics, a blend of anise, fennel, verbena and citrus. It also has a cool, scary spider monkey on the label.

The first thing you notice is the licorice. The smell reaches you even before you pick up the glass. The second thing is the milky opalescence (see above). The blend of liquids seems to gain substance in the glass. On the palate, the flavors spread thickly across the tongue, like the texture of a really delicious mix of peanut butter and lighter fluid. It's beguiling. You give the green fairy a wink and smile. Because the third thing you notice is how really good this is.

The fourth thing you notice is how bad your head hurts as you wonder who's bed you've slept in.

Whether Ernest chose this as a sea-sickness cure (as Champagne was generally thought to be back in olden times), because it was delicious or because it's the most effective way to get blood alcohol levels up to toxic levels, we may never know for certain.

But be careful of the monkey. He smells nice. But he's not your friend.

What Would Hemingway Drink?

To resuscitate our occasional forays into the history of drink, we set out recently on a bold experiment, one that broadens our original experimental mission.

One might, of course, argue that this is a departure from our prior tests of pre-phylloxera vines under the Thomas Jefferson rubric, or the Julius Caesar umbrella we employed for wines made in terra cotta amphorae. You could say this is more about nostalgia, less about historical inquiry.

I wouldn't disagree. But someone told me that Hemmingway's favorite drink was something called Death in the Afternoon, and I was immediately intrigued by the name. Google told me the drink was a noxious combination of absinthe and Champagne.

I'd like to point out in advance, given my recent illness, drinking this was a really stupid idea.

But absinthe has recently made a legalized comeback (2007) and the allure of chasing in Papa's boozy footprints was too exciting to resist.

Absinthe? From the Times: "a neutral spirit infused with myriad herbs and botanicals, centering around anise, fennel and a specific type of wormwood, Artemisia absinthium, from which absinthe takes its name. This wormwood contains small amounts of thujone, a compound once thought to affect the mind. It’s understood now that hallucinations and other health issues attributed to overindulging in absinthe were more a result of alcohol poisoning due to the high alcohol content, typically 50 to 70 percent."

Details of the "experiment" up next.