Death in the Afternoon

Ernest Hemingway

1 oz. absinthe

Champagne, chilled, to top

In a cocktail book from 1935, Hemingway offered up his own instructions for how to make it:

“Pour one jigger absinthe into a Champagne glass. Add iced Champagne until it attains the proper opalescent milkiness. Drink three to five of these slowly.” All right, then!

Hemingway loved many different drinks, of course—especially Daiquiris—but the morbidly named Death in the Afternoon was one of his own inventions, being a blend of absinthe and Champagne. It also shares the name with his 1932 nonfiction book about Spanish bullfighting.