A Sidecar Named Desire: 3 of the best anecdotes

Although A Sidecar Named Desire tries to both tell the stories of some of the most popular alcohols and have a literary bent, it’s still pretty okay.

What exactly is A Sidecar Named Desire? That’s not just a somewhat disingenuous way to open this; it’s a legitimate question. Above the title on the cover, it reads “An illustrated history of drink from 3000 BC to the present,” which makes you think that it’s just about booze in general, and indeed, it gives some of the origins of wine, vodka, tequila, and more. But the title alone, before you even get to the subtitle, is a great literature pun.

And so it’s a bit of a mixed bag (not a mixed drink) reading through the book, because the uncertain expectations make for a pretty uneven rollout.

At the same time, though, there could very well be a niche for this one here, since Greg Clarke and Monte Beauchamp have some pretty great illustrations. But if you need more of a preview of what kind of content you’ll see, here are our favorite literary tidbits.

How to enjoy a daiquiri like Hemingway

Unsurprisingly, Ernest Hemingway shows up quite a bit in this book, because it’s Hemingway, and his reputation for loving booze is legendary. But despite all that, one of the best recipes involves how to make a daiquiri how Hemingway probably would have had it: the Papa Doble (that’s right, Hemingway has his own special daiquiri).

This recipe takes quite some time to show up, but the entire anecdote about how Hemingway’s love affair came to be includes the note that apparently he once knocked back 17 in an afternoon, which seems like a lot even for him. It basically encapsulates what you might be actually be expecting from the book — instead of being divided by period, it’s divided by liquor type, roughly by age of production.

Jane Austen brewed beer

A Sidecar Named Desire dubs Jane Austen “The Brewmaster of Hampshire County” in its chapter on beer, and not only gives you a recipe to make your own spruce beer (which might be the most difficult recipe in the book, given that it calls for actual spruce twigs).

But it’s something that isn’t necessarily known by Austen dabblers, or even by some of her more diehard fans. Longer anecdotes like these, using more famous authors, are very welcome, and the rest might seem a bit disappointing.

TS Eliot and his cat

As the book reminds us, TS Eliot basically gave us Cats by virtue of a book named Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats; is it any surprise he had a cat of his own? But this is also a book about alcohol, and in this case, the connection comes in when it comes to the name of Eliot’s cat: Noilly Prat, which is a brand of vermouth. (It appears there is a typo on the page, as “Prat” is printed with two Ts instead of one, but only has one on the next page.) That’s some devotion to your particular brands of alcohol.

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