More Literary Cocktails

Mondays on the BottleBlog will feature a cocktail recipe that is sure to be just the thing to get you through the rest of the work week. Though we don't expect you'll bring in all the fixins into your place of employment, we hope you'll try our recipes responsibly at home! Today we continue on our literary theme.

The past few weeks, Mixology Mondays have explored the favorites of Hemingway and the alcohol references in Dickens' body of work. Today, thanks to this awesome book (Hemingway & Bailey's Bartending Guide to Great American Writers) graciously lent to me by my boss, I can share some more favorites of other well-known authors. Apparently, as is the case with most of the arts, alcohol consumption is rampant in the literary community. What better to help with creativity then to loosen up with a cocktail?

One of my favorite authors back in college was Jack Kerouac. According to the Bartending Guide, Kerouac had a great love for Mexico, for "The good old saloons of real Mexico where there were girls at a peso a dance and raw tequila." Of course, Mexico's chief spirit being Tequila, he was known to indulge in many a Margarita

-1 1/2 oz. silver tequila
-1 oz. Cointreau
-1/2 oz. lime juice
-Coarse salt
-Lime wedge

Rub the rim of a chilled cocktail glass with lime wedge and press into a plate of salt. Pour all ingredients into a cocktail shaker filled with ice cubes. Shake well. Strain into the cocktail glass. Garnish with a lime wedge.

"Don't drink to get drunk. Drink to enjoy life." -Kerouac

Unlike most writers, William Faulkner, from the very beginning of his career, drank while he wrote. He claimed, "I usually write at night. I always keep my whiskey within reach." That he did. In Hollywood, hired by director Howard Hawks to write Road to Glory, Faulkner showed up to a script meeting carrying a brown paper bag.

In the early 1800s, doctors used the word "julep" to describe "a kind of liquid medicine." Of course, this is not to suggest that the Mint Julep is good for you, but it may be what Faulkner had in mind when he said "Isn't anythin' Ah got whiskey won't cure."

Mint Julep
-7 sprigs of mint
-1/2 oz. simple syrup
-3 oz. bourbon

Crush 6 mint sprigs into the bottom of a chilled double Old-Fashioned glass. Pour in simple syrup and bourbon. Fill with crushed ice. Garnish with the remaining mint sprig and serve with two short straws. Sometimes a splash of club soda is added.

But it's not only the gentlemen who were known for their lush tendencies. To pay for a holiday in Europe, Edna St. Vincent Millay agreed to write some quick pieces for Vanity Fair under the byline Nancy Boyd. She would need liquor and company to help her get it done. Late one night, while writing and drinking bootleg gin with Edmund Wilson and the poet John Peale Bishop, a drunken Millay asked the two men to hold her in their arms. She instructed Wilson to take her lower half, Bishop the upper. The rest is known only to the three... but it's sufficed to say that Millay was known as much for her love affairs as she was for her verse. What better a cocktail than Between the Sheets then? Basically a Sidecar with rum, this is the perfect nightcap. Like Millay herself, it is wonderfully seductive.

-3/4 oz. brandy
-3/4 oz. light rum
-1 oz. Cointreau
-1/2 oz. lemon juice

Pour all ingredients into a cocktail shaker filled with ice cubes. Shake well. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.