Did Philip Greene Just Uncover the Real Jack Rose?

Philip Greene of the Museum of the American Cocktail (MOTAC) makes the case for the real Jack Rose cocktail. According to Greene:

"The first recipe shown above is the commonly accepted, conventional recipe for the Jack Rose. However, submitted for your approval is a quite different recipe. In 1922, there was published in Paris a classic cocktail book titled Barflies and Cocktails, written by Harry MacElhone and Wynn Holcomb, with contributions from Harry Moss. MacElhone was the owner/bartender at Harry’s New York Bar, in Paris, and Holcomb was a noted caricaturist and society reporter for the Paris edition of the New York Herald. Arthur Moss’ job was apparently to scare up interesting recipes from the bar’s regulars [...]

Well, dear reader, here you have a recipe published around the same time (Barflies was published in 1922, my edition 1927) that Hemingway wrote and published The Sun Also Rises (1926).  Further, Hemingway happened to live in the same town (Paris) where the inimitable Mr. MacElhone tended bar, at a saloon that Hemingway was known to frequent.  So, does it not make sense that Hemingway, and Jake Barnes, might have been drinking this version of the Jack Rose?  Pardon me, I’m an attorney by training, I can’t help the leading questions.  But I happen to think that this is Jake Barnes’ Jack Rose."

Fascinating stuff.

Varying interpretations of this cocktail is nothing new to me. I've put together a tasty Jack Rose using Last Exit's house-made grenadine. It was absolutely delicious. 

America Eats Tavern features one that is truer to the conventional recipe and seems to use grenadine that is more widely available. But Greene has uncovered something very different. 

Jack Rose - Harry MacElhone’s 1920s Paris recipe:

- 1 1/2 oz Applejack or Calvados
- 3/4 oz dry gin
- 3/4 oz fresh orange juice
- 3/4 oz fresh lemon or lime juice
- 1/3 oz French vermouth
- 1/3 oz Italian vermouth
- 1/3 oz grenadine

Shake well with ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with twist of lime or lemon peel.

After giving this version a try, I found that it expresses a little more complex citrus flavor compared to the more mainstream Jack Rose recipe. Some of the other notes that dance on the tongue come from the gin and vermouth. There's a lot to work with here.

Is it better than the Jack Rose cocktail I made with house-made grenadine? I'm not so sure. It is, however, quite delicious compared to the interpretation I experienced at America Eats Tavern. Others may disagree.

Either way, Greene tells an amazing story that had me reaching for my old copy of The Sun Also Rises from college. And just like in college, I was left asking myself again, "what is this cocktail called the Jack Rose?"


Note: This post has been revised since its original publication

Drinking With Hemingway

On July 2nd 1961, standing in the doorway of his Idaho home, Ernest "Papa" Hemingway slid two cartridges into his favorite shotgun, placed the barrel into his mouth and pulled the trigger. Since his death, there have been hundreds of riveting stories about Papa and how he lived. 

Just recently, during a visit to New York City's PKNY (of which I'll be posting about sometime soon), I chuckled when I saw an old beer ad featuring Hemingway in his Key West home. And these days, I can't help but reflect on his reputation as a writer as well as his reputation as a drinker suffering from mental illness. 

According to A. E. Hotchner (and often gloriously retold by Christopher Hitchens), Hemingway use to read obituaries every morning while sipping on a cool glass of champagne. That particular story has always stuck with me as I came to study the author in college - understanding the person behind such classics as The Sun Also Rises and The Old Man and The Sea.

This year, before the anniversary of Papa's death, in a fascinating New York Times op-ed, Hotchner reveals his thoughts on the paranoia that consumed Hemingway later in his life. Paranoia that turned out to be justified - the author had been tailed by the FBI until roughly 1961. Hotchner writes:

"Decades later, in response to a Freedom of Information petition, the F.B.I. released its Hemingway file. It revealed that beginning in the 1940s J. Edgar Hoover had placed Ernest under surveillance because he was suspicious of Ernest’s activities in Cuba. Over the following years, agents filed reports on him and tapped his phones. The surveillance continued all through his confinement at St. Mary’s Hospital. It is likely that the phone outside his room was tapped after all.

In the years since, I have tried to reconcile Ernest’s fear of the F.B.I., which I regretfully misjudged, with the reality of the F.B.I. file. I now believe he truly sensed the surveillance, and that it substantially contributed to his anguish and his suicide."

And on the heels of this revelation, Salon.com published an excerpt from Marty Beckerman's book The Heming Way: How to Unleash the Booze-Inhaling, Animal-Slaughtering, War-Glorifying, Hairy-Chested, Retro-Sexual Legend Within... Just Like Papa!, clearly satirizing the American icon. Before delving into Hemingway's "rules" for imbibing, Beckerman writes:

"These physical and psychological maladies suggest that imbibing is a bad thing -- with negative consequences -- but Hemingway told us in 'The Sun Also Rises': 'It seemed out of place to think of consequences during the fiesta.' Alcohol takes years off your life, but he told us in 'A Farewell to Arms,' it 'always makes you happy,' like a well-marbled steak drenched with blood and butter. (And with bourbon.)

Anything worth doing is more worth doing blitzed ..."

That may seem to be how Hemingway lived but it essentially cost the author his life. And the unfortunate circumstances of his mental health and alcohol abuse didn't allow even his closest friends to see this act of domestic surveillance being perpetrated by our own government (how's that for an Independence Day message). 

Anyway, as Hitchens says, alcohol "is a good servant and a bad master." Make sure the booze remains your servant this 4th of July and have a safe holiday. 

Oh, and if you're drinking, have one for Papa today.

Note: This post has been revised since its original publication.