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https://www.barrons.com/articles/literary-libations-51584990000
Literary Libations
Jake Emen
March 23, 2020 3:00 pm ET
Literary greats are known for their transportive powers; flip open a book and their prose will make a place or moment come to life. But if an author's words can call to mind a physical sensation, can the physical sensations of a drink—flavors, aromas, mouthfeel, temperature—call to mind a book or its author?
In the past, the idea of literary-inspired cocktails and bars was more often a question of decor: a bar with a photo of Ernest Hemingway because he once drank there, or a collection of books on display calling to mind a library. Authors have also done the creating. Consider the Papa Doble, Hemingway's daiquiri concoction that begat the namesake Hemingway Daiquiri; or the Vesper, a martini riff James Bond author Ian Fleming inserted into his novels. (Please don't get bartenders started on Fleming's "shaken, not stirred" line, which set back cocktail culture for decades.)
These days, however, bartenders around the world are doing the work themselves, with a far craftier and more creative mindset, shaping libations with the help of specific literary inspirations.
In Washington, D.C., Chantal Tseng hosts weekly Literary Cocktails events at the aptly named Reading Room, a cozy back nook with some 3,000 donated books filling the walls, within the larger bar Petworth Citizen. Each week, a new tome or author takes center stage, and Tseng crafts a cocktail menu to match. "The starting point is to read the book, and I'll make note of certain passages and quotes as I go," she says. "Often, there will be ingredients referenced in the writing, like sage, orange trees, teas, gin, wine, whiskey, or whatever the case may be. But also I just riff off associations I have in my own cocktail library in my head."
"There are stories that come with many cocktails that I can pull from and pair with any given scene."
— Chantal Tsen
Drinks may sometimes start off relatively simply, incorporating Irish whiskey for an Irish author or spice-laden flavors for an Indian one. Other times, they're more freewheeling.
"There are stories that come with many cocktails that I can pull from and pair with any given scene," Tseng says. "My associations with ingredients also play into it. If there is a theme of memory loss, I might incorporate absinthe, or maybe a religious theme might lead me to use Bénédictine, Chartreuse, or other wine-based ingredients. Dark or bitter vibes might send me to dark and bitter ingredients."
After hosting more than 200 Literary Cocktails sessions over the past four years, Tseng has her process nailed down and can quickly get to work. "Books never fail to inspire," she says. One of her most recent efforts was based on The Prague Cemetery, by Umberto Eco, and saw her following a rich set of references in the text to ingredients such as Champagne, coffee, and eau de vie for different creations, while a mention of Palermo led to the use of a Sicilian amaro, Averna, in another.
There isn't always such straight-forward inspiration, of course. Notably, Tseng once based a menu on The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams, and went about the painstaking task of inventing a real-life Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, a tantalizingly dangerous and wacky concoction described in detail within the book and regarded as "the best drink in existence."
Gaby Mlynarczyk, who currently works as the beverage director of The Fat Radish in Savannah, Ga., has made a habit of turning favorite authors into go-to drinks.
"I'll read a book and find inspiration from within its pages, whether it's the story arc or part of the journey," she says. "Often I'll write down a list of ingredients that I associate with events, places, or people, and build my cocktail recipes from there."
In one case, she turned to the John Keats poem "To Autumn," and the particular line, "And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells," deploying pumpkin and hazelnut in the resulting autumnal sipper. A menu for Macbeth showcased Scotch whisky from different regions, while a fanciful take on Alice in Wonderland deployed nootropics—supplements referred to as cognitive enhancers—to call to mind the story's trippy tales.
Alessandro Zampieri's Il Mercante, Venice's modern-cocktail institution, takes its cues from both history and literature. The bar is named for the famed explorer Marco Polo, and its inaugural menu was devoted to cocktails based upon Polo's journeys, with ingredients and themes from different locales. Zampieri has since turned to different explorers—including Ferdinand Magellan and Sir Francis Drake—for annual menu overhauls, relying upon historical texts along the way.
While basing a cocktail on Ernest Hemingway, or even naming a bar for him, is nothing new, Agung Prabowo has taken things to an entirely new level with his renowned bar The Old Man, first in Hong Kong and now with a second location in Singapore. Each drink on the menu is based on a different Hemingway work.
Hemingway left no shortage of drinkspiration across his works, but beyond using bottles Hemingway or one of his characters would drink, Prabowo turns to the settings and themes of a given book, as well as its time and place. The Snows of Kilimanjaro cocktail, for example, is a combination of marshmallow-infused gin and lacto-fermented raspberry topped off with Gruyère cheese that's freshly grated atop the glass as it's served, which provides guests not only with an aesthetic match for its name but a surprisingly delightful sip. Not to mention plenty of food, or drink, for thought.
Literary greats are known for their transportive powers; flip open a book and their prose will make a place or moment come to life.