A jigger of absinthe drowned in iced Champagne, clouding the glass to an opalescent, pale-green milkiness as the anise oils bloom out of solution. Bracing, herbal and deceptively potent, it drinks like a French 75 with the gin, lemon and sugar traded for a single slug of anise, the cold bubbles lifting a long, dry licorice finish.
built · Champagne Flute · Up
add
Pour the absinthe into a chilled Champagne flute.
top
Top slowly with iced Champagne until the drink turns an opalescent, milky pale green (the louche).
other
Do not stir; serve at once and sip slowly.
Ernest Hemingway devised the drink and gave it the title of his 1932 book on bullfighting. It made its debut in print in 1935 as his entry in So Red the Nose — subtitled Breath in the Afternoon — a volume gathering cocktails contributed by writers. His own directions were brief: absinthe in the glass, iced Champagne poured over until it turns milky, then a recommendation to have three to five, slowly. The drink also answers to the Hemingway or the Hemingway Champagne, though it has never been adopted as an official IBA cocktail.