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A BOOK CELEBRATING 50 WOMEN WRITERS WITH RECIPES FOR AN EQUAL NUMBER OF COCKTAILS SOUNDS LIKE AN EXCUSE FOR A GET-TOGETHER, RIGHT? RIGHT
Marianne Taylor taste tests the cocktails created in tribute to the greatest women writers
SUPPING cocktails on a Thursday afternoon in one of Glasgow’s most sumptuous bars … It’s a tough job but somebody’s got to do it. In my experience journalists tend to be a glass-half-empty bunch, but every now and then you get an assignment that doesn’t feel like work at all; today is one of those days and this is one of those assignments. I’m propped on a barstool talking about two of my favourite things in life, booze and literature, with the writers of a new book that puts a smart, contemporary spin on both.
We’re at the 158 Champagne and Cocktail bar in Hutchesons, in the Merchant City, an elegant and sophisticated space that harks back to the jazz age. Wood panelling surrounds the long marble bar and Nina Simone is playing in the background. There’s something Hemingway-esque about the whole set-up, which is perhaps ironic considering all of us are female, including Kirsty McQuarrie, the super-knowledgeable bartender fixing our drinks. And it is outdated stereotypes around gender, literature and alcohol that Laura Becherer and Cameo Marlatt, authors of A Drink of One’s Own: Cocktails for Literary Ladies, hope to break. The book, a beautiful little hardback, brings together 50 cocktails inspired by 50 great women writers, with each mini-spread featuring a profile and drawing of a writer accompanied by the recipe for a drink inspired by her life and work. It’s a fascinating journey through literary history that goes from the likes of Jane Austen and the Brontes through Dorothy Parker, Simone de Beauvoir, Maya Angelou and Doris Lessing, and up to date with Zadie Smith, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Glasgow’s own Louise Welsh and Zoe Strachan. The project was a labour of love for the authors, both doctoral students from
north America studying literature at the University of Glasgow. Both are also big fans of the burgeoning Scottish craft alcohol scene around gin, whisky and beer, and came up with the idea for the book while enjoying a dram at The Curler’s Rest on Byres Road. The life of Zelda Fitzgerald, the writer best known for being wife of Great Gatsby author F Scott, came up.
“We were sitting there on a rainy cold night after class, drinking Laphroaig and talking about how badly Zelda had been treated,” explains Becherer, 28, who comes from Wisconsin. “She was painted as some sort of crazy woman, despite being abused and stifled by her husband.
“Scott squashed her creativity and punished her for wanting to be a writer. At the same time, there has always been this boys’ club among male writers, especially where drinking is concerned, and glorification of Hemingway. He involved himself in the Fitzgeralds’ affairs by writing an essay about measuring Scott’s penis in a public toilet and comforting his wounded masculinity, saying that Zelda was trying to destroy Scott and his confidence. It’s astounding, really.”
According to Marlatt, 25, who comes from Ontario in Canada, Zelda wasn’t alone in being disregarded because of her gender.
“It’s very frustrating that history remembers Zelda as the unstable half of the partnership, the over-emotional one, and gives her little credit as a person or artist in her own right,” she says. “Unfortunately it is very typical of the experience of so many women writers.”
Becherer and Marlatt list a slew of others who suffered a similarly patronising fate including Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein, the aforementioned Bronte sisters (who had to pretend to be men to get their work published), Dorothy Wordsworth, sister of William, and poet Sylvia Plath; black and Asian women writers, meanwhile, suffered double discrimination.
In tribute, the pair decided to indulge their passion for alcohol and create a cocktail for all their favourite women writers, and the book was born. Their own experiences of pub culture also influenced the book.
Anne Bronte was very outspoken against alcohol, so her cocktail contains only lemonade, fresh lime and cucumber
“Often men make assumptions about a woman’s knowledge of things like whisky and beer,” says Marlatt. “We’ve lost count of the times we’ve tried to order a certain malt at a bar and been interrupted by a guy telling us with a condescending smile what we should be ordering. We know what we like – we don’t need to be told.”
The book is clearly a noble endeavour, and avid readers of either gender will love it. But are the cocktails any good? It would be remiss of me not to try them out, and with this in mind we ask McQuarrie to put her shaker to work.
We start off with the Sylvia Plath, a rich and smooth concoction of gin, grenadine, egg white, cream and raspberry coulis, and the JK Rowling, which mixes vodka, butterscotch schnapps and vanilla ice-cream – not a drink for young Harry Potter fans. Both are utterly divine.
I’m keen to try something champagnebased and with this in mind, and in tribute to her recent death at the age of 90, we go for the Harper Lee, which infuses a good bourbon with champagne, bitters and a healthy dash of peach liqueur. This one tastes great, too; these girls sure know their liquor. But how did they devise the recipes?
“We thought about each of the women and what we knew about their lives and work, and tried to make them relevant,” explains Becherer. “We invented lots of them from scratch, while others are a twist on a classic.
“Most are alcoholic but there are a few
that aren’t. Anne Bronte was very outspoken against alcohol, so for that reason her cocktail contains only lemonade, fresh lime and cucumber.
“Some of the recipes require quite expensive or unusual ingredients, but others were made with the specific intention of keeping the drinks affordable and easy to make.
“We hope people will really enjoy making these cocktails but that they’ll take the opportunity to rediscover the work of the writers they know and try out the work of those they don’t.”
Perhaps appropriately we finish with the Zelda Fitzgerald, which fuses gin, honey, ginger beer and lemon juice. It’s a zingy and refreshing affair and since I’m a serious gin fan – earlier I introduced my new drinking companions to the joys of Harris gin – it’s right up my street.
Someone opens the door and a rush of cold Glasgow air shoots in, ruining my little fantasy of being sat on a balmy porch in 1920s Long Island, cocktail in hand, shooting the breeze with Becherer, Marlatt and Zelda Fitzgerald. I’m obviously three sheets to the wind – don’t tell my editor. We were drinking a toast to the inspiration behind the book; cheers, Zelda, here’s to you. A Drink of One’s Own: Cocktails for Literary Ladies is published by Freight Books, priced £9.99. With thanks to the staff of Hutchesons, Ingram Street, Glasgow
We’ve lost count of the times we’ve tried to order a certain malt at a bar and been interrupted by a guy telling us what we should be ordering