Ingredients
- 3 ounces whiskey -- blended Scotch whisky
- 1/2 ounce lime juice
old-fashioned glass
Instructions:
Place 2 ice cubes in an Old-Fashioned glass, add the whisky and lime juice (it's about 1/2 ounce). Stir.
The Wondrich Take:
Ernest Hemingway. The man liked to drink, to be sure (more on that in a moment), but he was no alcoholic. Well, maybe clinically. But by the standards of major twentieth-century American authors? No. Faulkner, Fitzgerald, O'Neill, Sinclair Lewis: pathetic drunks. Hemingway: dedicated social drinker.
Okay, very dedicated. Paging through his friend/facilitator A.E. Hotchner's memoir of all the times he spent with Hemingway from 1948 until a couple of weeks before Papa pulled the plug in 1961, the reader with a mixological bent notes the following drinks consumed by the great one: champagne, Sancerre, Valpolicella -- all sorts of wine -- plus cognac, calvados, byrrh (that's a French apéritif), buckets of daiquiris when in Cuba, the occasional martini and Bloody Mary when not, lots of Scotch (with and without lime), maybe a spot of tequila or vodka the morning after, and once even a little Spanish absinthe for old-times' sake. Despite all that, he kept it more or less under control, and -- what was that? Yeah, we said Scotch with lime. Scotch whisky and lime juice, that's right. Well, now that you mention it, we thought it sounded kinda weird, too. Give us a minute?
We're back. You know, it's not half bad. If you get the proportions right, the lime juice cuts the barley-sweetness of the Scotch (blended, please) without washing out the smokiness. Refreshing. If we had to guess as to the origins of this simple variation on the Whiskey Sour, we'd guess Papa Hemingway himself. He liked his drinks dry (he took his daiquiris practically unsweetened), he spent a lot of time in Cuba, where limes are abundant, and he drank a lot of Scotch.
The Scotch & Lime has another advantage: Say, for the sake of argument, you're in one of those joints where the bartender can't make so much as a gin and tonic without slipping a little Midori into it or otherwise bollixing it up. Do what Hemingway did: Order a Scotch with half a lime on the side and squeeze it in yourself (in truly desperate straits, you can just snag 3 or 4 lime wedges out of the garnish tray). Perfect every time. No wonder they gave him the Nobel Prize.
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