Eatdrink #39 January/February 2013

60 www.eatdrink.ca
№ 39 | January/February 2013
books
It’s Always Happy Hour Here
A Literary Look at Cocktails
Review by Darin Cook
With the biggest night of alcohol
consumption, New Year’s Eve,
now behind us, some of us may
be vowing to abstain from our
favourite drinks and just read about alcohol
for a while before going on the next bender. In
which case, these books may help.
Christine Sismondo, a Canadian writer
with a bartending past, gives us an intellectual
look at mixed drinks in Mondo Cocktail:
A Shaken and Stirred History (McArthur
& Company, 2005). Sismondo outlines her
preferred recipes for twelve well-known
cocktails, veering off onto entertaining
tangents while doing so. Many tales feature
Ernest Hemingway, who was around for the
invention of several cocktails. She admits it
was difficult to write a single chapter without
referencing the iconic American writer. He
was in Paris when the Bloody Mary arrived
on the bar scene, and in Havana giving rise to
the daiquiri. He has been credited with first
using the Red Eye (tomato juice, beer, and a
raw egg) to cure hangovers.
No cocktail is her
favourite — she seems to
love them all equally. But
martinis do hold a special
place in the lineage of
alcohol beverages, as
they are “the universal
symbol of all other
cocktails. It is the
cocktail to which all
other cocktails aspire.”
A martini was the first drink
made in the White House by Roosevelt after
repealing Prohibition in 1933. Sismondo is a
purist about martinis and advocates shaking
(not stirring), very hard for a very long time —
“It may hurt you, but you can’t hurt it.”
The writing team of Jordan Kaye and
Marshall Altier also speak highly of the
martini: “Never out of fashion, never out
of place, the martini earns
every bit of its legendary
status as the ultimate
cocktail.” These two
authors have combined
their efforts in How
to Booze: Exquisite
Cocktails and Unsound
Advice (Harpers, 2010). They describe
how alcohol influences our behaviour, good
and bad, like loosening up social events
and drowning our sorrows after a breakup.
According to these booze enthusiasts, there
is always the right drink for the right time.
They write: “The constellation of drinks
is boundless and, like the greeting card
aisle at the pharmacy, provides options for
every situation imaginable. Some are sickly
sweet, others just plain off, and a rare few
are just right.”
Like a dysfunctional self-help book, they
claim to perfectly match exotically-named
drinks to any occasion: a Whiskey Sour when
you realize your ex-girlfriend is engaged to
someone else; a Rusty Nail when attending
a high school reunion; a Hot Toddy for days
calling in sick to work. They may take it too
far in the self-help department by suggesting
that on your deathbed, “you spend your last
few earthbound moments stirring up a good
drink, settling into your favourite chair, and
enjoying one last indulgence” with a Rob Roy,
simply because “it is as worthy a drink as any
to sign off with.” These authors also make
reference to Hemingway’s contributions to
the field of drinking, including a cocktail
called Death in the Afternoon — leave
it to Papa to create a drink using only an
overabundance of absinthe and a splash of
champagne. In the end, the authors admit
that “the right drink for right now isn’t
necessarily this cocktail or that cocktail.
The right drink is always, always, always
whatever you bloody-well feel like drinking.”