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By Root 355 0

fresh pineapple juice, and coconut water instead of coconut cream. No Coco López. For the purest piña colada, I favor a recipe of three parts pineapple juice, one part coconut water, and one part rum. With that basic 3:1:1 ratio, you’ll discover a drink that’s a world away from what typically comes out of the blender. I usually don’t strain my pineapple juice after pureeing it (making mine a piña sin colar, I guess) since I think this helps the drink holds together a little better. For the coconut element, coconut water gives the drink a lighter, more complex, nuttier flavor. You can make piña coladas with all types of rums, but my favorite version uses rhum agricole, the Martinique rum made from pure sugarcane juice, from brands such as Rhum Clément and Neisson. The fresh cane notes mingle well with the pineapple and coconut and add a level of—dare I say it—sophistication.

PIÑA COLADA

Serves 4

½ pineapple, peeled, cored, and cut into chunks, plus 4 small slices for garnish

4 ounces white rhum agricole

4 ounces coconut water, such as Zico or Vita Coco

3 cups ice cubes

Place the pineapple chunks in a blender and puree. Measure out 1½ cups (12 ounces), then freeze any leftover puree for another use. Combine the pineapple puree, rum, and coconut water in a blender, then add the ice. Blend on high speed for about 1 minute. Pour into 4 Collins glasses. Garnish each with a pineapple slice, and serve with straws.

CHAPTER 9

THE ANGELS’ SHARE

EXUBERANCE IS BETTER THAN TASTE.

—Gustave Flaubert

I DON’T KNOW WHY I WENT TO the Hemingway Bar during my last trip to Paris, but I did. Maybe I wanted to see if there were still Americans who bought into that old 1920s fantasy vision of Paris. Or maybe I was just looking for trouble. Anyway, let me be clear, the only reason to go to the Hemingway Bar, which is in the Ritz Hotel, is to watch utter ridiculousness in action. Cocktails at the Hemingway Bar start at €30. Glasses of 1834 cognac sell for €1,250. The Guinness-certified “world’s most expensive cocktail,” the Ritz Sidecar (with caviar), sells for €1,250. On the walls hang tons of Hemingway memorabilia, including a creepy photo of Papa, ailing, without a beard, from the late 1950s, and, disturbingly, his twelve-gauge Browning rifle mounted above the bar—which may or may not be in poor taste seeing as a gun like this is how the man killed himself. I ordered a Leperliac, purportedly “a hunting cocktail created in the Armagnac country,” which called for Armagnac, mint, “white French clarified grape juice,” and champagne. Okay, I thought, for €30 they must have at least pressed the grape juice themselves, right? No. Pierre, the bartender, grabbed a plastic bottle of store-bought grape juice, the French version of Welch’s, and poured it into the shaker, along with a weak, free pour of the brandy and the sparkling wine. He offered me a newspaper and chips, as if that would make up for things.

As I was drinking my banal Leperliac, I felt someone rub my back and ask me to scoot over one bar stool. It was an American woman from Manhattan named Joy, seventyish but you could tell she’d been a beauty in her day. Joy was accompanied by a slightly younger couple from South Carolina. The husband told me he was “in the timber and real estate business.” Joy took my hand as if I were her oldest confidant and whispered in my ear, “I’ve known these people for years and I can never understand a word they say.” My newspaper was open on the bar, to an article about the president, and Joy whispered, “We don’t really like Obama. But my father always said, ‘Don’t talk politics or religion.’ ” They’d all flown in to Paris for the weekend, for a friend’s birthday, and had been staying at the Ritz.

These people could have been minor characters out of The Sun Also Rises, or one of Fitzgerald’s novels, except for one major omission: they knew very little about their liquor. They’d been served by the white-jacketed charlatan Pierre the night before, and Joy clearly was charmed. “How does he just know all the measurements?” she squealed.